


Insanity

by Malsang



Series: The Courteship of the Woods [3]
Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Autism Spectrum, Bigotry & Prejudice, Confrontations, Cultural Differences, Culture Shock, Dark Races Culture & Customs, Deus Ex Machina, Developing Friendships, Dialogue Heavy, Don't Judge Me, Dreams and Nightmares, Dreams vs. Reality, Dwarf Culture & Customs, Elf Culture & Customs, Emotional Constipation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to Friends, First Meetings, Fist Fights, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Headcanon Accepted, Implied/Referenced Addiction, Injury Recovery, Insight, Insinuating Language, Isolation, Languages and Linguistics, Loss of Control, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Mild Language, Misunderstandings, Philosophy, Platonic Soulmates, Politics, Prompt Fill, Prophetic Dreams, Psychological Trauma, Public Display of Affection, Religion, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Revelations, The Ainurlindalë, The Sight, Vilya
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-16
Updated: 2019-01-24
Packaged: 2019-10-11 06:05:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 23,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17441342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Malsang/pseuds/Malsang
Summary: Recently, in The Courteship of the Woods:A diplomatic party from Imladris has dared the wrath of the Elvenking to speak of matters concerning the fate of elf-kind in preparation for the dawning of the Age of Men. Things did not go as smoothly as hoped, and some unForeseeable events occurred to derail Elrond's careful planning.Wondering if he has had his judgement compromised from an unexpected direction, Thranduil must now seek to ratify his actions without compromising his status as rightful leader of his Silvan elves; continuing to guard their best interests even as he struggles to make sense of the wider themes of Middle-Earth which he has ignored for so long in his grief-stricken love-hate relationship with seclusion.





	1. Who are you?

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [Timelord_From_Erebor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Timelord_From_Erebor/pseuds/Timelord_From_Erebor) in the [Elvenking](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Elvenking) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
>  
> 
> Insanity is a Form of Grief
> 
> Thranduil's daily life leading up to the intrusion of his home by the Company in which he sees, and occasionally talks to, his dead wife. When he is 'with her', it is as if he is a different person. Still a king, but also a loving husband and father.
> 
> *
> 
> Tied into larger plot-arc, set after the events of The Hobbit: Thus 'the Company' is deliberately misinterpreted in a broader sense than the original 'Thorin's 14', but within the same spirit, if not quite the intended letter, of the prompt. Etc. as Legolas is currently 'heading north to find the Dúnedain'.
> 
> May take several works to fulfil all aspects of this prompt. Stay tuned. (Yes, I am talking to myself here.)

Horthor paused to leave the keys with the guards at the top of the stairs, "No-one is to speak to the prisoner, by order of the King. Don't believe anything you overhear. That one is a master of sedition. Close your ears and stand firm." Turning to the other, more senior, he delegated, "Report to Tauriel directly and bring her up to speed on this matter. Inform her that I am at our king's disposal until further notice."

Tauriel might not be elf-of-the-decade in their king's eyes, but she was still an excellent captain-of-the-guard in the eyes of everyone in the Woodland Realm. She preferred not to enter the dungeons if she could avoid it these days, but the preference to remain within their borders was one she was now passionately shared with their king. She had been reinstated to her former rank and, like Thranduil, shared in the benefits which the common-courtesy of not referring directly to dead loved-ones afforded her in her grief.

Enduring together, through common loss; this had become the uniting theme of the Woodland Realm. This, Thranduil pondered, was not a wise direction to inflict upon his Silvans. Thiadwen would not have approved. He had struggled to imagine what she would have advised him, when thinking of her had almost always recalled to him the sheer finality of her life by dragon-fire.

However absurd the idea would normally be to him, the merest possibility that she might yet live, opened a door in his mind that common-sense would demand be kept firmly closed - that way lies madness. The dead could not be returned to the living, except as corrupted shadows of their former selves. And yet today, anything seemed possible, if you were willing to set aside preconceived interpretations of the world.

He had slowed to allow Horthor to catch-up to him, but now his pace picked up again in subconscious response to his renewed eagerness for future events. He stepped out with true confidence and assurance, instead of mere echoes of memory of his former self. If today's events had proved anything to him, it was that if something was truly important to People, if it could be truly believed, then Eru Ilúvatar would bless its conception, at least in the heart of the believer.

The man had spoken of weaving lag-time and lead-time into patterns; Elrond had ratified this idea by pairing it to the concept of meditation exercises. The healer's protégé had started to speak of many things, all of which now dangled like loose threads in his mind; firing his curiosity. Firing; why was fire always so important? He had just as many loose threads of his own, now that he came to notice them.

The young officer was matching paces with him smoothly; confident in his king's confidence. That tacit ratification was as reassuring to him as being part of a herd was to prey animals. Thranduil had always favoured elks, because a king of the largest forest in Middle-Earth needed to be directly associated with the Hart of the Forest in the mind. The Trueborn Hart however, was no mere stag to be domesticated. Even ignoring the importance of not subjugating a magical champion for base purposes, the critter had the short-spine inherent to a leaping creature, rather than the long-spine of a plains-runner such as horses had. A bull elk was a decent compromise; combining symbology with riding comfort, straight-line speed, and the instinct to attack predators with its antlers rather than preferring only to use them in the rutting season.

The bloodlines and training of his combat-elks were a particular source of pride for him. He had been attempting to cross a cow-line of pure-white elks with his best combat-bulls for centuries, but the male calfs had always proved frustratingly phlegmatic, no matter how early he bonded with them. They had a disheartening habit of repudiating their bond with him, once he started combat-training in earnest.

When Thiadwen had died, the pastime had served as something he could throw himself into as an escape from his grief, becoming obsessed with perfecting his public image as a shield to hide behind. The joy of being present for the birth of each new calf was a pleasure his people had quickly learned not to ask him to forego, for his ill-temper would endure until the rutting-season drew near, when the prospect of steering the begetting of new-life would overcome his sense of loss once more.

As they neared the guest quarters, Thranduil slowed to quietly explain to his officer, "I wish to introduce you to Lord Elrond's protégé myself. Our visitors would have us believe that he is no more than a sick child whose company is a strain they must endure with the practised fortitude of those who are wise in their dealings with foreigners. They think us lacking in sufficient wisdom to understand, yet I believe that it is they who lack the innate insight of Silvans, by being obsessed by western ideology.

"Lord Elrond seeks to mislead me by implying that I belong in Valinor, and that Silvans by extension, belong there too. His protégé presents a quite different take on what Lord Elrond's Foresights can be inferred to include. Yet I am Sindar. In such matters, this Elflord is quite correct to imply that I am the most vulnerable to being so manipulated.

"I require an unquestionably Silvan perspective for comparison. One whose youthful perspective is innate to their habits of thought, yet who has proved themselves talented within appropriate levels of responsibility befitting one of tender years. One who understands the pain of loss; and yet has not allowed it to lessen their confidence in their own judgement.

"You may not be unique in fulfilling these requirements, but you recommend yourself in more ways than merely having overheard Lord Elrond's perspective directly. I do not ask that you attempt to be anything other than yourself in this, trusting me to weigh your judgement relative to our respective fields of direct-experience with an open-mind for shared principles of insight.

"I advise that you do not seek to be polite with this one, for the Healer is quite correct in his conclusion that this man is incorrigible in his disregard for etiquette. He has his own reasons for ignoring inequality of rank which he presents persuasively, yet this does not mean that he is against being persuaded otherwise, only that he has yet to meet any example of the benefits of such that he could relate to.

"Do not seek to call him 'friend', even if you come to truly believe in such a statement, in the very unshadowed core of your very soul. He has no intrinsic understanding of the word and further claims will likely only irritate him. He likes language puzzles, and will compose his own definition only when he is satisfied that he understands what meaning he is truly attempting to convey.

"One more thing," and Thranduil dropped the volume of his voice still further as they halted outside the correct door, "His experience of other cultures beggars belief in its breadth, if not in its depth. Try not to be shocked if he forgets where he is in his drugged-intoxication. I personally would not be surprised if he habitually curses in Black-speech."

Horthor raised an eyebrow at this last, but stepped up without hesitation to rap on the door.

"Enter only! If thee possesses the sheer courage! To join me in drinking the King's Cellar DRY!"

"Courage to do so?" Thranduil enquired wryly, "Or lack of self-preservation to actually attempt it?"

"Courage! Courage alone will suffice! Yet! All who dare to enter must possess strong will! The will to dare to drink something more potent! Than so-labelled 'Mother's Milk'! If only to prove that they possess sufficient quality! To not 'settle' for such Inferior beverages!"

"Then drag your drunken-arse off the floor and open the door to allow your guests to enter, Half-wit! Or are you too far gone to converse sensibly with your betters?"

"Half-wit indeed! Courage you possess; but clarity? You may be Eldar, but by what right do you claim that 'elder' is synonymous with 'better', Old-timer?"

"Should a half-wit, such as yourself, yet possess the necessary coordination to open a door, drunk as you are, then they might also possess the necessary quality themselves, to deserve to be answered!" Soto voce, he continued, "Though I make no claim to possess an answer myself, in order to impart it." And if Horthor assumed that last to be intended for his ears alone, he was not yet ready to believe otherwise of his king. One must sing the full bridge, before a new chorus can be contemplated.

Heavy footsteps staggered slightly to the door and opened it. The man blinked in delighted surprise at the unfamiliar face. "Hello there!" he declared cheerfully, "Who might you be?"

"I Might be someone who could drink you under the table, and still hit the eye of an orc with a thrown blade at a hundred yards."

"Good grief, might you really? But might you also be able to shave the tail off a rabbit without startling it, at any distance?

Horthor gave this due consideration, as he looked upon the eagerly curious face of the man, who was ensuring his stance remained vertical by holding onto the top of the open door. "It has never occurred to me to attempt to do so."

"It's fun! And the rabbits don't mind. It separates the alphas from the need-to-improvers without their first mistake being their last. Not only the omegas get culled by predators you see; sometimes they come up against a superior force who could take out even the best of them, and then hard-cheese to the unlucky ones. The does like knowing which bucks are worth mating with, even more than the bucks care about begetting a new generation with the best partner. Rabbits are always playing a numbers game, and what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

"Only little girls think nature is cute and fluffy; it's constant, endless warfare from where I stand, and my lord can be a bit of a pointy-eared princess himself at times."

Thranduil's riposte to that was non-verbal. He bodily flung the man up onto his shoulder like a wayward child and carried the yelping, struggling figure down the corridor towards his own quarters; the guard trailing stoically in their wake. "It seems that I was short-sighted in approving the plans for these halls. We lack a water-trough to dunk impudent younglings into. But I'm sure that we can improvise some equivalent."

"Ya would ne'! These waters have ne'r been subjected to such contaminating filth! The ver' bed o' t'river myyet rrrun dry in protest! And then where would that leave ye? Without t'river to bring y'all ye wine-barges? Think o' ye people m'lord, they canne' be puttin' up with the likes of ye' without wine t'take the edge off!"

"Perhaps I should just pack you into an empty cask and have it stamped 'deliver directly to Erebor, unopened'. I'm sure that Daín would welcome you back with open arms."

"Forsooth, my lord, I have never met that lead-footed, piggy-trotting, ram-brained, warmongering, Petty Lord of Rust!"

Thranduil halted so suddenly that the man was thrown from his shoulder, tumbling reflexively to land, unhurt, in an undignified heap several yards down the corridor; having failed to plant the crouch and falling back onto his behind. "And iffin I e'r did," he continued undaunted, "I would ne' restrain myself to decorous slights o'er his heritage; I'd aim to have him by the nuts and squealing until none but that mount of his would consider him worthy o' beddin'!

The man climbed to his feet, weaving slightly, "That there tale is told in evrry Dwarven Hall. And not all dwarves admire Daín for being so eager to kick-off that he started slaughtering the very people he could rely upon to fight alongside him against the Enemy, despite being clearly warned of the danger. They think him short-sighted to have used such a weak insult as an excuse to start a fight against a clearly inferior opponent. That iffin he was too weak to take yer in physical-combat, he should have at least finished castrating yer in the eyes of your people with words alone, rather than wasting his army's strength on mere elves.

"Being truly Pig-headed is an art, not just a display of brutish strength. If you can bite yer opponents nadgers off without touching him, why lower yerself to testing-out whether yer're capable of beating him into a bloody pulp? So not only was Daín incapable of deadly insult, not only was he too unskilled to face yer in single combat that he didn't even propose it, he was so blood-lustful that he threw the lives of his own people away against mere elves, under the very nose of the smirking Enemy.

"Erebor's throne is cursed. Smaug's arrival should have been enough warning for all dwarves to realise that that bloodline had grown too weak to be bowed before as the Great Boar's Chosen. The Boar and the Hart are not natural enemies; it was never Aulë's Intent that his people should war with the Firstborn..." He gave up on remaining vertical, and slid down the wall to sit. "Daín's claim to the throne is shakier than yer realise, but since yer don't have the brutish bone-structure to butt heads with him, yer need to grow a pair of tusks instead. Or rather, a decent set of antlers, rather than those pretty twigs that yer're so fond of."

Thranduil crouched in front of the man, so that his meaning would be clearly visible on his face. "Are you proposing that I ... rut ... against a pig?"

The man grinned evily, "I could certainly teach yer how to make that piglet squeal." He eyed Thranduil indelicately, "I'm sure yer're ... sufficiently endowed ... in all the right places. If perhaps a little, naïve, of certain, techniques."

The two Eldar froze. Thranduil picked his words with the care of one in very foreign surroundings, attempting to link his words into the existing thread of the double-meanings. "Would that even be possible?"

Eyes gleaming with approval, the yellow-eyed Dúnedan-lookalike countered, "As His Malevolence would have said, 'Anything is possible, if you know the right techniques.' "

Thranduil stood, tucking his hands behind his back. Horthor was looking a bit pale to his eye. "'Broad' might have been a misleading understatement, in hindsight." he commented with gentle confidence in the young elf.

Horthor nodded in acknowledgement, relaxing to follow his king's leadership. The man eyed this transition with keen interest. "You trust each other," he observed. "More than either of you trust your own judgement alone." he then added, upon reflection.

"Most people," Thranduil nudged, "Do not have to search so far afield as you have, to find perspectives that resonate with their own direction."

The man stared up at him, reflecting esoterically, "Some things are worth a lifetime of fruitless searching to discover."

"And yet, discovering the Arkenstone was the downfall of Thrain."

"Only because..." The man glanced at Horthor, rethinking his direction. "What do boars do in a forest?" he asked the younger elf.

The guard looked in askance at his king, but Thranduil merely smiled and tilted his head, curious what answer would be proffered.

"Make more pigs?"

The man laughed, "Now here's an elf who's determined not to be seen as a prude! Bravo, indeed! However, it was not where I was going with that metaphor. This time!"

"Dig," Thranduil submitted.

"Give the stag a tine! Indeed they dig. And for what do they dig, Fawnling?" he directed back to the guard.

"Around here, mostly acorns and beechnuts in the mast. But pigs generally seem to eat anything they find in front of them."

The man looked to Thranduil for his best guess.

"Wild vegetables?"

Burying his head in his arms, the man groaned, "I give up. Elves are like monkeys, always looking down on the world from lofty perches."

"What's a monkey?" Horthor enquired, uncertain if this was an insult.

"A critter native to the South. Like a tiny, ugly, furry man with feet like hands and a tail at least as long as its body. A tail, they can wrap around a branch and hang from as easily as they can from their hands or feet. According to the writings of Haradion; their original diet consisted of a wide variety of fruits, nuts, berries, seeds, bark, leaves, flowers ... and honey if they could get it. His monkeys are famed in the East, as much for being incorrigible thieves as for their mastery of tools and their gesture-language which they use to converse amongst themselves and with speaking-races. Though I think most of the gestures I saw them make to people, were as equally insulting as what was shouted at them. 'Haradion' itself is considered a curse-word, as is its Westron equivalent; 'son-of-the-south'. Sometimes I wonder if Westron 'harridan' and 'to harry' evolved separately, or in direct consequence to this. Eastern women can be ... challenging at times."

"Are you from the East?" Horthor asked.

The man's expression darkened, "That would be a neat explanation wouldn't it? 'If it's evil, it must come from the East and furthermore, be driven back there on-sight.' In case you haven't noticed, I speak Westron. And I have enough difficulty understanding THAT at times!" and he lurched-off down the corridor a few paces until he realised that he was heading away from his own room and had no clue what lay in this direction.

Thranduil steadied his swaying form, guiding him onwards. "Elrond said that you don't talk about your past, but I thought that you merely might not wish to speak to him of it."

"There are a lot of things which I do not speak of to him; the same is true in reverse." He glanced back, "Do you have somewhere better to be, Fawnling? I can understand you not wishing to be around a mutt like me."

Horthor caught up. "What's a mutt?"

"A good insult to use against Daín's lot. It's a shortening of 'muttonhead'."

"Appropriate." Thranduil agreed.

The man smiled, "And I walked face-first into that one."

Horthor solicited "Are there any other questions I shouldn't ask?"

"Well, let me see," he responded light-heartedly, "Never ask Eru Ilúvatar how he personally thinks, because you can say goodbye to your sanity. That's the only truly dangerous question I've ever encountered. Seeking to directly understand the mind of the Allfather is ... inherently self-destructive. Like trying to swallow Arda whole; your hroa could not contain such things and survive."

"Did you ask that question?" Thranduil enquired, fully aware of the man's ... pig-headedness? He had occasionally come across the mutilated bodies of boar-hunters over the centuries. Even transfixed head-to-tail by a spear, a wild boar had no awareness that it was 'already dead' and could easily slaughter the ill-prepared before its own death caught-up with it.

"Let's just leave it at the inconclusive premise that the Dúnedain didn't choose to label me Shatterbrain in mere jest. Thus, I have more reason than most to attempt to solidly define the difference between sanity and insanity, and judge for myself which side of that line I truly reside on."

"Is that why you distrust the judgement of your lord? He must have told you that he doesn't believe that your mind is broken."

"My lord is very skilled in publicly presenting his views as he wishes others to perceive them. He is also very capable of preserving his private opinions at all times without overtly lying. Fealty cuts both ways: As it would never occur to him to ask me if I think him sane, I see no reason to internalise his judgement of my mind, equally unsolicited."

Thranduil rolled this idea around his mind as he steered the group into his private rooms, "Has it ever occurred to you to simply reflect his opinion back to him in this matter? Most people lack a pristinely logical reason for not directly asking for reassurance. Regardless of whether or not it is judged as a healthy reaction, leadership decisions leave one vulnerable to endless questions of competence, as you illustrated so clearly with Daín. Being pig-headed is not an intrinsic elven quality, whatever you think of our own 'lordly games'.

"Expecting to live forever, as a race as opposed to one individual alone, means that the consequences of our actions towards our own are inescapable. It is not only our children's children's children who must pay the price for our mistakes - long after we are dead - as it is for men. Millennia later, someone can still be harking on about your decisions and their consequences. The memory of being the cause of something which you could not foresee at the time, endures with us. I don't yet believe that you grasp how long I have been alive; not in your heart. Lord Elrond has lived longer than even that, and who knows how long in addition to that if you count-in Foresight futures as time-relived, at least in terms of the soul. Not even Foresight can prevent all errors of judgement, or there would be no elven dead."

"I am not unaware of these issues." he remarked, settling into a comfortable seat with a grateful sigh and closing his eyes. "I've heard little else on the way here. Can I count on your discretion?"

"You wait until now to ask that?" Thranduil smiled.

Still close-eyed, the man smiled in turn, "I wasn't talking to you. Fawnling?"

"Unless my king orders otherwise."

"Yet there are others you answer to, who rank below him in your hierarchy, yet who might demand answers to questions you may subsequently gain relevant insight into, from me. Honestly, I don't grasp how anyone could willingly agree to answer to anyone but themselves, let alone a whole chain of people who could then righteously complain about you deliberately withholding information from them; impeding them in the proper execution of their duties."

"He has a point, sire."

Thranduil was startled. Not just by the fact that Horthor had openly agreed with the man's perspective, but by the blindsiding double-entendré of the address, 'sire'. Men used such terms for their kings, but elves, as a rule, addressed their leaders only as 'lord' in Westron. To say 'adar' instead of 'aran', was as shocking as saying 'adan' instead of 'edhel'; for how could being called a man instead of an elf, be any more or less shocking than being addressed as a father instead of a king? 'Brannon nín', 'aran mín', 'Ara Thranduil' or 'Thranduil, Aran Eryn Galen'; but never, ever 'adar' by anyone but Legolas... 

A light touch on his wrist brought him back to the Now. "I've seen that look in my lord's eyes too often. He's never once been in the least irritated to have those thoughts interrupted."

"If he's never expressed gratitude for it, I thank you on his behalf as well as mine."

"Only once." The man glanced fleetingly at the young officer. 

When Thranduil felt that touch on his wrist again, he merely covered the hand with his own.

"What am I missing here, Fawnling?"

"The fact that the Prince left because the one he loved, loved one who was not him; one who grieves over the loss of one who was more important to her, than the young prince."

"Guess again. I've seen THIS look many a time too, during my lord's foresights. Only, he often gets a do-over when he snaps out of the horror of clear hindsight. I'm not the only one who missed this nuance of interpretation."

Horthor reconsidered more recent events, including what he had overheard in the dungeons earlier, "If it was you, I'd guess that it was a nuance of translation you'd got yourself hung up on."

The man moved to sit at Thranduil's feet; being a far less uncomfortable position to simply lean against the Elvenking's legs and look up at the guard, than to stretch to touch the older elf whilst carrying on a conversation with the younger. The Elvenking's hand shifted to rest upon the man's shoulder. Settled, the man continued, "You are either extremely well informed, or way too sharp to be a mere guard."

"Officer of the watch, to be precise. I get to read reports, but reports include only basic statements of fact. Guards don't gossip on-duty; at least, not on my watch. I never did care for my peers' opinions as a 'mere guard'. Your lord however, had a lot to say to mine."

"If you are capable of unravelling my lord's insinuations that neatly, then you are wasted as a mid-rank guard."

"My liege imparted some pointers on the matter, the rest however, is conjecture based on experience in spotting behaviour which is unusual or out-of-place. Pre-emption is more efficient than awaiting escalation."

"Unfortunately true." He glanced up at the mind-wandering elf and sighed, "Don't hate me for this..." He stood up, and turned to sharply flick the Elvenking upon the eartip."

Thranduil's high-pitched yelp was possibly audible by the front-gate guards. Very slowly,  the violently prostrated elf picked himself up off the floor he had fallen to in muddled reaction, eyes watering with the dazzling pain, still cradling his ear protectively. "Never, do that again." he gasped.

"No promises. It's the only quick-fix healing-trick I know for unresponsive elves."

"Then Elrond is a sadist." Thranduil denounced vehemently, lowering himself carefully back into his seat.

"Technically a masochist, as he taught it to me for use on him, just in case."

Horthor's sheer level of horror, was a better indication of how unthinkable this whole situation was to elves, "This is what you didn't want to share in front of me?"

"Actually I judged the events that led up to my being taught this, more compromising. He did swear me to secrecy over certain points, after all."

"What, was he possessed by Sauron at the time?" Horthor sneered flippantly, mortally offended over the whole incident.

"Hardly. Does the name 'Vilya' mean anything to you?"

The guard shook his head sharply. Thranduil however, interjected vehemently, "Never speak that name to anyone. Either of you. Si úbedui!"

Horthor briefly stood-up to stand to attention, saluting fist-to-shoulder with a curt nod. The Elvenking returned the gesture without rising, still a little dizzy. Seeing the man's frown, hurt and confusion writ plainly on his features, Horthor curtly prodded, "Do keep up, gwenig. I thought you were good with words."

"I'm not an infant, merely because I don't understand how being forbidden to speak of certain things and denouncing an entire topic as taboo somehow 'makes the world a better place'. Mindless-obedience is never my best option, from my own perspective."

Horthor smirked, "Use your head. I've just been directly commanded by my king, not to utter words that are unspeakable. What therefore will happen when, for example, the captain of the guard asks me to report on today's events? What must happen if I hear you speak of unspeakable things? Or my king?"

The man struggled with this concept for several long minutes. "It makes no sense. It is impossible to hear something that cannot be said. Anything that you hear spoken, by definition, cannot be intrinsically unspeakable. How can anyone obey a direct order to disobey a direct order, without in so doing disobeying the order to obey first? It is nonsensical: The logic is a maelstrom; an ouroboros - self-consuming in an endless circle. Why are you smiling?"

"Just a quirk of translation. Tell me, what is your opinion of liars?"

"I understand that people can feel like they need to lie because they fear the consequences of telling the truth. I don't condemn people for doing things out of fear."

"Have you ever lied?"

"Only once, as a young child, to my personal recollection. I find it impossible to imagine how it would not always make things worse to do so."

Thranduil inferred, "You got caught."

"No, they took it as truth. But what happened next was not what I thought would happen. What had always happened before - when it had been true when I said it - did not happen. I had lied based upon the premise that I knew what was going to happen if I said nothing, therefore I made a false claim, thinking this would be preferable. Instead something else happened, an outcome I had never imagined was possible, and it was all based on false information. Information I had knowingly supplied falsely.

"If new things can happen out of nowhere - regardless of how long you have spent convincing yourself that you know what awaits you down both paths - then feeding people false information to try to avoid something bad happening, can always lead to something much worse happening; for no better reason than you being too scared to stick to the truth. However scary facing the consequences of the truth may be, the unknowable consequences of a lie can be even scarier."

"What did you lie about?" Thranduil was curious.

"I claimed to feel ill, so that they would not force me to go somewhere. They gave me medicine I had never seen before, stuff I didn't know whether it was safe to take if I wasn't ill. But I had to take it. It was a command and I had to obey, however scary."

"It never occurred to you to simply say that you had lied?" Thranduil pressed.

"I'd already scared myself silly by having to face the unknown consequences of actively protesting instead of saying nothing. I was even more scared by the unknown consequences of actively doing anything more to resist what happened next, instead of simply doing what I was told.

"After that I never wanted anyone to believe me if I lied. I don't hate liars, I just don't choose to lie myself. I never wanted to be trapped in mindless obedience; but the only real control I had over my fate was not to supply false information.

"The next time I faced a situation where I felt that I knew better than those ordering me to obey, I was given a choice: Obey, or leave. I left, rather than continue to try to change the order with truths that no-one wanted to hear.

"I never have discovered a situation in which someone refusing to listen, to accept my perspective and change it with a better truth than I already possess, gave them the right to tell me to obey their judgement above my own. I guess that I always leave rather than mindlessly obey. I will not submit to someone who will not, or cannot, justify their judgements to me. Any authority which refuses to listen, refuses to justify their own reasoning - is too afraid of telling the truth for fear of the consequences - is no better than me. I know I'm a mutt and that I don't deserve to be mindlessly obeyed; that I don't deserve to be blindly believed. If someone else can't do better than me, if they will not communicate their reasons for wanting something to happen, then why would I yield to them?

"I was trusted, I was believed, and I was actively lying. I didn't even admit that I had lied when it made things worse. I don't want to be that person, so I won't blindly obey anyone who acts that way. No-one has done worse than me, by making questionable choices out of fear. No-one is inferior to me. But I have yet to meet anyone incapable of making bad choices through fear, therefore no-one is superior to me.

"Like everyone else, I believe that I understand how the world works by ranking People as inferior, equal or superior to me. I know where I fit into that ranking system, and therefore what I am capable of. Mine just isn't as complicated as most people make theirs. Beyond People there is Other. If it's not Other, then it's People. No matter where I have yet searched, I have yet to find anyone or anything which innately ranks above or below me, that wasn't intrinsically Other and therefore, unrankable.

"The only problem with this, is that I'm using a different yardstick to most everyone else, and therefore I cannot be part of their personal world."

He lapsed into silence, drawing out a battered bundle of parchment and a writing implement out of his pocket. Unfolding it, he searched for a clear space amongst the mostly unintelligible pictograms, and added to them. The two elves watched for a while, either intrigued or lost in their own thoughts. Horthor was the first to speak.

"You spend a lot of time on your own?"

"Even around others." the scholar confirmed, searching through the sheets for a cross-reference.

"And you spend your time...?"

"Trying to make sense of everything that I don't yet understand. These however, are language notes, for when I come up against an idea I have no way of describing with words I already know."

"What are you currently attempting to define?" Thranduil leaned forward, craning his head, trying to see the hidden meanings in the messy pages.

"A lot of things at once. How this 'mael-storm' fits into the Ainurlindalë; the ouroboros dichotomy; fore-hindsight versus belief; the gold-soldered clay; Other-People..." he pointed out each relevant section in turn. Bastardised runes warred with Tengwar notes and less recognisable symbols. "I was working on elder-Eldar when you came back. Did he tell you anything about what he Saw?"

"He said he saw my wife in Aman."

"With or without the necklace?" he queried without looking up, unsurprised.

Horthor took over as Thranduil froze, "He didn't mention a necklace. He said only that she was with his own wife."

"Well he would. Celebrían ... she is his eternity, and she is not, currently, ... hereinafter; 'Sín'. I'm sure that grieves him a lot, enough to predominate over other thoughts. Her mother was in Imladris just before Lindir got swamped with learning enough to cover for our lord, before we came East. I thought that she only wanted to see the new foal Maeldaer's been harping on about ever since his mare got pregnant, but I think that they talked about a lot more than horses that day."

Horthor looked to Thranduil, completely lost by these references to people beyond his concern.

Thranduil looked pensive, "Was he much changed after that?"

"Honestly I have never known him any different. I haven't been in Imladris that long. He's been getting steadily more tense over the years, but he's never been a relaxed individual during my time of knowing him."

Horthor was slightly confused, "How long have you been in Imladris?"

"Dunno." came the flippant reply, "What decade are we in now? Still the 1340's or did I lose track*?"

"Wait, how old ARE you?"

"Depends on who you are asking. You aren't the first person to call me 'gwenig'."

Thranduil smiled, "Men do not usually lose track of time so completely that they ask the current date to the nearest decade. I can however, easily imagine an Elven scholar doing that and you mimicking their habits of speech as well as you do Dwarven mannerisms.

"What is your reason for concealing your age? Merely a defence against being snubbed as too young to understand, or something more?"

"You were the one who said 'úbedui', not me."

"Meaning," Horthor pointed out, "That this conversation is not taking place."

The man looked utterly bewildered. "Yes it is."

"Not," Thranduil interjected, "In anything but the most literal sense."

"How can you understand insult and not understand secrecy?" Horthor enquired.

"How can YOU take offence over a simple statement of fact?"

"Hîdh, hîn nín." Thranduil pleaded, "Some things are not so easy to understand as they first appear." The linguistic puzzle of relativity was more than enough to enthral the young scholar, diverting his attention inwards. It might be a while, Thranduil concluded, before he resurfaced with his own understanding of what meaning this was intended to impart.

Turning to Horthor, he attempted to interpret the guard's reaction, hoping that they were both on the same page on this matter. He was doing his best to adjust to all these new ways of thinking about things, but it was challenging when most of what he had always relied upon as 'this is how the world works' was crumbling beneath his feet. The guard seemed to have taken his request to form his own, contrasting opinion as solemnly as he had hoped.

The guard rose with him, following his lead to leave the man to his own thoughts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * As author I did lose track when writing this date, having just stuffed my head with tons of names and dates from canon history. I (and my OC) intended to say 2940's, but it turns out that I (we) got the current date mixed up with the Shire-reckoning, which happens to also be a significant date from earlier history. I've left this completely unedited as a genuine example of the unintentional misinformation proliferated by a character whose interaction with Arda is as subject to being hijacked as I, as author, am subject to the whims of my own muse, the White Rasgobol Rabbit.


	2. Whose side are you on?

Thranduil rarely entered this room; it had once been Thiadwen's solar. None of the original furnishings remained. Nothing that could inadvertently remind him of her. It was not healthy to dwell on things that could not be changed; this is what he had always told himself. Now he wondered if Thiadwen would have disapproved of his short-sighted disposal of everything she had once held dear. "What do you think of him?" he dragged himself back to current events.

"I think he's a bad influence on you."

Blindsided again. It seemed that there were some major downsides to being accidentally overdosed on the man's Moonshine. Everything seemed utterly unpredictable; he had no chance to guess what would happen next because almost anything could happen next. If the man felt like this all the time, it was little wonder that he could be rather childish and near-sighted in his behaviour. "I'm listening."

"You were correct to call him Lord Elrond's protégé. He's opinionated, arrogant, disrespectful, manipulative, bombastic, spoilt and clearly quite mad. Everything is black and white to him; either his way or the highway. He's dangerous; and I would be remiss if I didn't point out that he is dragging you into his ways of thinking far more effectively than Lord Elrond ever could; because he isn't even trying to do so. He will offer the impossible, because he isn't sane enough to know that he is speaking of impossible things.

"He is a child. As much as he refuses to believe it, he is still a sick child. And no parent is immune to getting caught up with wishing that were not so. But look at yourself; you've barely spent any time with him, and you are a complete wreck. You are not going to outdo a healer at healing, however much you may wish to do so, however much you wish to prove Lord Elrond wrong. The dead are dead and Legolas is gone. Nobody asked us if we wanted this to be true, it just is. The heart can be a deceitful creature, insisting that it wants what it wants, regardless of any other considerations. You've never allowed your heart to overrule your head until today, and you wouldn't be asking for my lowly opinion, if you weren't fighting a losing battle to keep things in perspective.

"I wouldn't be surprised to learn that he's the reason that Lord Elrond is here in the first place. Or that he's the reason that a White Council member is currently sitting in our dungeons. Maybe Lord Elrond is a great healer because he can resist the lad's insanity better than most; but I doubt even he is immune to it, if the boy is indeed telling the truth about what has been happening in Imladris since he arrived.

"That boy vomits his mind over everyone near him, and he doesn't care enough about other people to know that this is wrong. He doesn't want to fit in, he wants to stand out. He doesn't care who gets hurt; he has no sense of restraint or responsibility for his actions. What makes you think that he will do anything but betray you as soon as he realises you aren't gullible enough to be taken in by every single aspect of his fantasy world? He's already marked you once, drawn blood. What more proof do you need that he won't see reason?"

Thranduil's fingers found the new scars upon his throat, delicately tracing the faint indentations. "What would you do?"

"Order the lot of them to leave; send them all back to Imladris, bag and baggage. The boy isn't our problem, he's Lord Elrond's. The longer they stay, the more problems they will cause. This isn't our fight, my lord. Why are we getting involved?"

Thranduil smiled, "It would be rather out-of-character, wouldn't it?" The guard's silence was answer enough. "I value your opinion, Horthor. You make your points clearly and efficiently. I think I must speak to your captain about raising your rank more officially. Would you be willing to watch over the boy, keep him lost in language puzzles whilst I speak with her?"

"My lord." Horthor drew himself to attention. The higher one's rank, the more unusual the duties that would be entrusted to you. "My lord?" he queried to the retreating figure, "You ARE planning to change first?"

The Elvenking turned on his heel, wordlessly exiting the room via a third door.

 

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Tauriel was walking eastern border. She wasn't technically patrolling; just walking. With the mind of her king absorbed with the delegation from the west, she felt the need to pay personal attention to their eastern positions. Nothing must be allowed to creep up on them from 'behind'.

Thranduil was perfectly capable of approaching in a way that didn't draw attention to his presence, but he made no attempt to do so today. She paused so as to allow him to easily catch up with her. On rare occasion he would seek her out rather than sending word for her to come to him. With the calving season drawing to a close, the Elvenking tended to be at his most relaxed and amicable at this time of the year, preferring to be outdoors whenever he could put off less desirable tasks. The delegation had been delayed as long as possible, but she suspected that Lord Elrond was determined to be heard out whilst Thranduil was in a less combative frame of mind. However, the presence of his new calves had always seemed to her to make the Elvenking more entrenched against thinking about anything beyond their borders. It may not be as practical to travel in winter, but she would not have wanted to be the one attempting to convince King Thranduil to abandon the Greenwood during the summer months.

Even forewarned, his current appearance was still shocking to behold. The guard had informed her that a member of the Imladris delegation had become violent towards their king, and that Lord Elrond was currently a guest in their dungeons. Such were the predictable consequences of an Elflord failing to ensure respectful, disciplined behaviour towards their hosts by all members of the delegation. Still, she had not expected such extensive injuries. The bruising was already extremely colourful in reaction to powerful healing magic, showing up just how violently he had been struck. Had it been anything but an unarmed attack, he might have been killed. Even unarmed, a blow that violent would have killed a mortal creature, crushing the delicate bone-structure of the skull, dislocating the jaw and breaking the nose and eye-socket. As her king was a Sinda, it probably hadn't even loosened a single tooth, as a Silvan elf might have suffered. The bruising was not high enough to have swollen his eye shut, though the scratches proved that fingernails alone had broken the skin in the follow-through. Not a bad enough gouging to leave scars, though she did not recall hearing any tales of scarring to his throat from those who had been here longer than her.

Since the battle with the Enemy on the plains before the Gates of Erebor, she had learned that the reason that no-one mentioned the king's wife was out of respect for his dignity in concealing the still-raw scars to his soul. These weren't the dragon-fire scars she had heard tell of, but they looked just as livid now as the first day he had got them. She must remember to enquire into who else's name was unspeakable around the Elvenking. Perhaps a sibling or a lost child? She felt she understood her lord much better these days, and did not comment upon his appearance when he reached her.

"Horthor seems to be quite the hidden gem." the king opened; coming straight to the point without preamble.

"Indeed, my lord. He has conducted himself impeccably as an officer, winning obedience through good judgment, despite most of the guards being older than him and resistant to taking orders from one so green."

"He follows in your own footsteps." Thranduil remarked.

"Not so closely as I first thought. He has his own style of leadership, more conservative than my own."

"An attitude that appeals to those older than himself, no doubt. He engenders a sense of intrinsic stability in his attitudes. I quite misread him."

"My lord?" She couldn't be certain, but this last did not speak as confidently of the young officer's potential as the previous statements."

"I had hoped for a more open-minded perspective, not a mere reiteration of that which is shaped to appeal most easily to the widest audience."

"None of our people want to move west, my lord."

"Nor would I attempt to lead them to do so." he reassured her, staring out at the lands beyond the wall. "I had hoped, however, for a more youthful perspective on matters. A bit more confidence that not all unusual things are to be dismissed as foreign and therefore undesirable. Perhaps I ask too much of a culture habituated to not questioning the way things have always been done." He turned to her, ignoring her undisciplined, fleeting glance at his recent injuries. "Tell me, do you believe me bigoted against all other races?"

"I believe that you put the needs of our own people before all others, my lord." she ventured, surprised by this line of questioning. Not everyone travelling from Imladris had been elven. Had some deadly insult been taken to cause such a violent reprisal; a vengeful blow which Thranduil had not attempted to dodge? According to Legolas, the men of the Dúnedain were all blood-tied to the House of Elrond, dating back to the earliest years of the Second Age. It was vaguely possible that Lord Elrond had felt the need to defend those ties. He was certainly capable of hitting someone hard enough to kill with his bare hands, if Thranduil was any worthwhile comparison, when aroused to anger. She had not believed the guard's first impression when he told her that Elrond had been the one to strike the king, especially when his evidence for this interpretation was so thin. She had cautioned him not to jump to wild conclusions, and sent him to rouse Horthor's relief to take over as officer of the watch.

"The young man said the same." came the regretful reply. "He believes that I have put the concerns of elves before the concerns of the Hart."

"The heart can be a false guide, my lord."

Thranduil blinked, "'Aras', not 'gûr'." he clarified. "Aragúrolos Faetaur, Aran Galaderu."

Tauriel reconsidered. Religious debates were even more volatile subjects for discussion than political perspectives. "Did he strike you, my lord?" It seemed unlikely that a Dúnedan could inflict such damage, but zealots were dangerous when aroused. Who knew who, or what, might be backing them?

"You think to defend my honour?" Thranduil teased. "That my ego could not withstand such a blow?"

Tauriel sensed the branches shifting beneath her, (metaphorically,) "Did the healer give you something against the pain, my lord?" she asked, surprised at his reaction and suspecting side-effects.

"Lord Elrond has proved himself as skilled at taking the sting out of bruises as he is at inflicting them." he countered, throughly enjoying expanding on the double-entendré.

Tauriel wasn't sure if she wanted to know what that really meant; she was a warrior, not a diplomat - mincing words was not her style. "Did he check for any signs of concussion?"

"He was certainly quick enough to imply that my judgment was impaired."

"I think I prefer shooting orcs to playing such games. Orcs don't loose your own arrows back at you."

"Forgive me," he turned back to contemplating the view, "It's been an intense day, and it's nowhere near over yet."

"Was there something in particular that you wished to speak to me about?" she redirected.

"Yes, I wished to speak to you about dwarves. I believe that we may need to approach Daín over matters of mutual importance to our peoples, and you've proved yourself more open-minded in your dealings with them than I."

Tauriel looked strained, "It was my understanding that we would be keeping within our own borders, my lord."

"And it was my understanding that doing so was in the best long-term interests of everyone within our borders. Unfortunately I may have been remiss in defining 'everyone' so narrowly." Idly he touched the scars at his throat.

"What bit you, my lord?" They did not look like orc teeth-marks to her practised eye.

"Taur-e-Ndaedelos." Thranduil replied, naming their home in a Sindarin translation of 'Mirkwood'. "Perhaps it was less than wise of me to ignore Radagast's garbled warnings of tales from the woodsmen. For all our unusual guest will speak of such things, that Istar might yet prove to be his sire."

Tauriel fought to adjust to these revelations. "I thought him merely one of the Rangers."

"He has spent time with them, but he has mixed freely with all manners of people. Including those whom we would not normally consider to be worthy of such a benediction. Just as I did not think a dwarf worthy of the love of an elf." He turned to her, "I was wrong, Tauriel. I apologise for misleading you in my attempt to spare you pain."

Tauriel's breath caught, her eyes bright. She stood looking out over the view, wondering just what had happened to change the mind of someone who would normally consider even a Sindar-Silvan marriage to be unconscionable. The Elvenking stood quietly with her, equally lost in his own thoughts.

She felt something change in him then; as if, somehow, she stood beside a tree, rather than an elf. At first glance she could not see any reason for this sense of otherness to him, other than perhaps stillness. Yet the longer she looked, the more her eyes tried to trick her into seeing something above his head. Something she could not decide if it reminded her more of branches or antlers.

"The spiders withdraw." the Elvenking intoned, trance-like. "They will cull their own so that only the strongest survive to breed a new generation as the weather cools. The Hart buys us time to rebalance the forest. We must not waste this time, or they will return, stronger than before. We must look east before we look west, for allies in this reordering."

Tauriel had always thought of him as her lord, though she had questioned his judgment before she had learned the pain of loss first-hand. She thought she had understood what it meant to be king, but seeing him like this; she did not feel 'lowly' compared to this. If this was what being king truly looked like, then she felt privileged to call him her Lord and King; not diminished by being lesser than an elf older and better-born than she. The longer she looked, the stronger her impression of him as a Woodland King became; crowned with moss-velvet antlers, however translucent, in the bright, summer sunshine. He turned to her; the mirage was gone and he looked confused.

"Brannon ar Thalion mín," she saluted, reverence in her eyes as much as her voice, "Whatever you have been through today - however much pain it has cost you - it has changed you. If this is the wisdom imparted to you, then I shall do all I can to see that it comes to fruition." He looked so lost at this that her heart went out to him. Impulsively she reached out to touch the scars on his throat, "There is no shame in bearing these marks, for they are merely the most visible; there for everyone to see. There is much more than these to see, something far more beautiful. Yet, these give credence to what the eye would otherwise struggle to believe could be true."

The Elvenking slowly reached out in turn, delicately running the back of a fingertip down her cheek. "If I were ever minded to beget a daughter, I believe that I could not do better than to imagine her just like you." For elves do not beget their children, mindless of anything but the act itself. They merge their souls with their partners, each presenting their own image of perfection to the other until the two images became one cohesive picture that is greater than the sum of its original inspirations, yet still within the boundaries of that which each could physically offer to the whole.

For a Sinda to propose that he would use a Silvan as his personal inspiration, was not a base proposition or any statement of carnal attraction. It was both the highest compliment of fatherly affection for an elf-maiden an older male could use as a shared cultural reference, and it was the greatest compliment a king could offer to one of his subjects without actually blessing a marriage into his line.

Regardless of whether or not Thranduil would ever personally bless a marriage between Sindar and Silvan individuals, the idea of a Sinda princess whose begetting was inspired by the memory of a Silvan elleth, was a revolutionary thought to say the least.

He did manage to shock her with his next statement, as he dropped his hand and eyed her speculatively, "I believe Thiadwen would have approved of you."

In context, he could only mean his wife, but to hear her name for the first time from his own lips was something she could never have imagined happening. Nor did he seem distressed at recalling her memory to him. The idea that his wife would approve of her as a begetting-image only slowly crept up on her, leaving her as equally speechless as she had left him before. The idea of the ruling couple thinking a Silvan elf acceptable as inspiration for a Sindar begetting...

Overwhelmed by the praise, she turned back to the landscape. For him to believe that his wife would have approved, implied that his son's begetting had been at least partially inspired by a native male. The emphasis of mentioning his wife by name, implied that it had been her version of a perfect son. Even so, Thranduil must have approved of it in the core of his soul, or he could not have brought himself to sire.

To share such an intimate detail with her spoke volumes about his most private opinion of her people. He truly was not the person she had mistaken him to be for all these years, merely someone whose personal grief was so profound that it had crippled his ability to naturally express warmth towards others.

Now that she glimpsed the ellon behind the public mask, she perceived some hint of what may have attracted an elleth to rule at the side of the unshadowed young prince. "She must have been very beautiful to have be blessed with such a name." she dared to venture.

Thranduil actually smiled at the memory. "What else would you expect of the first-born daughter of Artanis? The Lady of Lothlórien may have blessed Celebrían's choice of husband, but only after Thiadwen had long since convinced Celeborn that blatant nepotism could only strengthen us all. Things tend to go smoother in politics when the leaders of different peoples are directly united by blood-ties. We begat Legolas before her sister had even married.

"I never meant to be cruel, Tauriel. Thiadwen had always hoped that Legolas would allow her mother to guide him in his choice of bride. She had such a short time with him that I felt I must respect her wishes in this matter. I couldn't face her family when I failed to protect her, even when Lord Elrond suggested that I allow them to foster Legolas. Besides, my son was adamant that he did not want to leave his friends in the Greenwood to be with his aunt. The idea of living in Imladris as a foreign prince did not appeal to him in the slightest. His mother had always emphasised the idea of the importance of developing an innate understanding the people one would someday rule.

"She was much wiser than me, but she had a right to be; she had lived through events that happened before I was born. She accompanied my father when he came east to found this kingdom; quite as proud as her mother in choosing her own path, she was. She could put the fear of Morgoth into me at times, but at others she made the world make sense for me. The idea of attempting to rule without her, so soon after losing my father...

"I know I haven't always lived up to your ideals of how a king should behave. I've been fighting a losing battle to do this alone without her Foresight to guide me. I don't want to be remembered as the reason this kingdom fails."

Never in her life had she imagined that Thranduil could be so open about his past. She had only ever met the uncompromising, cold Thranduil who was irritable whenever there was no excuse to get everyone drunk so that he didn't have to drink alone. She had thought herself doomed to the same fate, looking forward to the autumn festival with new insight into why these gatherings were so important to her king. The idea that it was more than grief alone that drove him to drink such strong wine that it could easily knock-out anyone who, unfamiliar with its potency, drank it at the same speed they normally drank wine, had not occurred to her. The sheer agony of grief she now knew, had seemed more than enough explanation for his behaviour.

Moreover, she suspected that few others had reason to believe otherwise either. Who would dare to even think about questioning such things? Who but her had ever rebelled against their king's decree? Only one face sprang readily to mind, but recently Tauriel had lost faith in the habits of thought she had been unwittingly leading others into. She had turned her attention to Horthor as a better example of how a warrior should behave; making it clear that this was the direction she felt was for the best for all of them and backing his authority despite his youth. Had she misjudged his quality in her own grief? "If you think Horthor unsuited to his current responsibilities-"

"I'm not trying to tell you how to captain the guards." he interrupted, "I just wish to borrow him from you to assist with the effort to smooth things over with the Imladris delegation. I am hopeful that the experience of having to guard a difficult individual, personally and on an ongoing basis, will be of use to him as a rite-of-passage for his attitudes. He is young enough not to be traumatised by such attitudes as he will be exposed to. Either his approach will prove its own merit, or it will falter before our guest's conviction. At worst they will come to hate the sight of each other, at best, they might rub off on each other.

"Whatever happens, it's better if they both take their best shot at working things out informally, rather than being stuck watching a pair of Lords duke-it-out verbally without having any say in their own fate. Dwarven Lords may think it more efficient to engage in personal hand-to-hand combat rather than let their people slaughter each other in open warfare, for internal debates. But since verbal warfare is ... relatively bloodless ... I see no reason not to allow a young Silvan to attempt to prove his quality against our disruptive guest in my stead. Such a game would allow Lord Elrond and I to step aside and oversee things from the sidelines, rather than directly butt heads over these issues. We might even learn something from the young champions - such as what this is really all about in the first place - rather than being too busy digging our heels in to listen to other perspectives. Too much can change too quickly, when leaders fall out over things. Things that could be easily forgiven amongst less exalted individuals, entrusted with no-one's well-being but their own. It is the only way I can see to officially have Lord Elrond released without offending anyone, if he agrees."

"I can't imagine that he would prefer to stay in the dungeons, my lord."

"I'm not so sure about that, but we will have to see. Walk with me?"

 

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A guard rushed towards them, obviously looking for Tauriel but seemingly relieved to see the king in close proximity. "My lord!" he began, and then stumbled over who to report to. It must be something highly unusual, for his experience to be inadequate to the task. "My lord," he started over, "You left orders that no-one was to speak to the prisoner, but we fear he is quite unwell."

"Slow down, Romdes." Tauriel cautioned, "If he is asking for a healer or for healing supplies, then there is no logical reason to deny him these."

"I wish he were asking for a healer! He sounds like he needs one. He keeps calling out for his friend-"

"Daro!" Thranduil cut the babbling elleth short. "Tauriel, you will find Horthor and Elrond's protégé in my rooms. Tell them exactly what you have just heard and bring them down to the dungeons as soon as possible. Ego!" he emphasised, cutting through the formality of saluting. "Romdes, with me!"

It did not take long for her to lope the distance to the king's personal rooms. Horthor came to attention as she entered without knocking. "Lord Elrond has been taken ill, he is calling for his friend-"

She barely dodged the man as her bolted past her, rebounding of the opposite wall of the corridor and taking off at a dead run.

"Follow!" Horthor snapped out, racing after the man, "I will clear a path for him!"

No mere man can outrun an elf, especially in unfamiliar territory. They caught up with him quickly. Horthor took the lead to steer him from in front, pacing himself not to outrun him. Tauriel positioned herself closer, grabbing his arms as necessary to prevent him from skidding into the walls at every sharp turn.

He moved like one in headlong flight rather than pursuit, as if fear was pushing him to run faster than his level of agility could compensate for. The only impressive thing about it was his endurance. No matter how far he ran or how many times Tauriel had to haul or shove him to prevent him from colliding with obstacles, he never slowed.

As they drew near to the dungeons, Horthor put on a turn of speed, outdistancing the man easily in order to get to the guards first lest they be delayed unnecessarily. There was no-one there by the time they reached the same point. The man never slowed as they hit the upper stairs, launching himself down the steps in flying leaps, necessitating Tauriel to do the same. Catching up with Horthor even though he was out-of-sight still.

Quiet noises of distress reached her ears from below, though the man was making such a racket by comparison that she doubted that he could hear it. He did however hear the squeak of the cell door, for he missed his landing from the leap, starting to tumble, shoulder to hip to shoulder - somehow managing not to slide off the side of the staircase - as he slowed enough to skid down the last few steps and stumble into the open cell, blind to everything else going on.

Only a step or so behind him, Tauriel stopped just short of the cell door, watching the scene within silently unfold as Horthor closed the cell-door smartly in his wake, standing back to await further orders from Thranduil, who was already inside.

There were many things that were strange about what she saw within, not least of which was that the man was not out of breath, but almost holding his breath as he crouched by the huddled figure of the Elflord at the back of the cell. There was something indescribably animal about him now; as if he were a mere beast that happened to be in the shape of a man.

"Don't hurt him," Thranduil requested quickly yet softly, backed-up against the wall in the tiny space. "He is responding, just not making any sense."

Yes, there was definitely something feral about the way he tried to engage the Elflord's attention, as if he was not used to having hands. More like a pet trying to get its master's attention than a man at all. It worked enough to get the Elflord to curl enough to reach out to him.

In a sleight-of-hand she almost missed, the man stole a ring from his finger and pocketed it. Elrond did not fail to notice it, and shrank away. The man relaxed, leaning back to assume a more comfortable pose. "He'll be alright," he reassured the onlookers, "He'll probably sort himself out if I just sit here awhile. Bravo, by the way," he continued ironically, "Whatever you left him to dwell on, he folded under the pressure."

"I didn't mean to hurt him." Thranduil admitted softly.

Elrond flinched as if struck, curling in even more tightly on himself.

"Please leave," the man requested softly, "This may get a lot worse before it gets better."

"I'm staying. I made this mess; I should be the one to fix it."

"If you're staying then I'm staying." Horthor looked as stubborn as a mule over this.

"Is there actually any point in me leaving if the rest of you are staying?" Tauriel asked.

"Why aren't there four of you?"

"There are four of us," the man points out. "Who were you expecting?" To the others he pointed out, "Foresights are never Seen exactly as things will come to pass."

"A Dúnedan, Legolas, and two dwarves."

The man laughed, "Well we have one prat in a Ranger's cloak, an Elven Prince of the same bloodline, and two guards - one as stubborn as a dwarf, the other, I've never met."

"The other chose to follow a party of dwarves bound for Erebor, trying to stop orcs from killing them all. My son went with her. They were close friends."

Elrond shook his head. "There were four watching, and two with me."

"You Foresaw me?"

"I never Foresee you. I sometimes see a Dúnedan that could be anyone, because I never see his face. But the Dúnedan with Legolas was not you."

"You dreamed this. You counted two of us twice because you couldn't believe seeing the same person twice; two inside with you, four altogether. You Foresaw Thranduil clearly enough didn't you?"

Elrond nodded, "Only he wasn't the one apologising, I was."

"For what?"

Elrond looked away. "For hurting him."

"You did that earlier. He didn't mean to hurt you back worse. It was just a stupid prank, I talked him into."

Elrond looked up, realisation and horror dawning. "In my nightmare, it was him calling out for you. He'd bonded closely enough to reach you without waking up."

"Did that make any sense to you?" Thranduil asked the man.

"Obviously. Down here, he's trapped in a nightmare he can't escape from except by calling out for me. It always makes more sense if you reverse the two kings."

"I'm not a king, nor is Legolas." Elrond protested.

"Sorry, that bit was a chatrang reference. It's another lordly game, but played on a specially table inlaid with alternating light-and-dark squares - I told you all about this years ago - two players pick a colour each, Light or Dark, and then arrange sixteen pieces of their colour in two ranks of standard starting positions to face-off against the opposing army. The game can then start, and really good players can be playing one game for weeks. I learnt to play well enough to win second place in a beginner's tourney, but I got wiped out in the second game in a junior tourney. Looking back, I think I should have swapped the Light and Dark King-pieces before I ever started a game. That way you can either choose to win in one move, or you have to move something else in the hope that your opponent won't choose to win in one move on their turn either, but instead follow your lead in showing mercy. Only, having already foregone the easy win, what are you now playing to achieve? You've already got your opponent's King where you could behead him at any point, but your enemy has your King too. I thought that would be a more meaningful way to play, but I didn't know anyone with a set of pieces by the time I realised that. I thought about carving my own, but it's a rather complicated game to teach someone just to then illustrate the idea of 'reversing the kings'. It's the only way I could ever make sense of the phrase 'my king' when addressing someone else. Whose king is whose when you start out as natural enemies at one another's mercy, and spend every move after that proving that you are not going to kill each other's King and end the game, because you could have done that at the beginning if winning was the most important thing."

Tauriel wasn't the only one to notice Elrond starting to relax as the man prattled on in what seemed to be an ingrained habit of talking aloud to himself whilst others happened to be there to hear it. He might manage to send you to sleep, but the cheerful sound of his voice would bring happy dreams. Like listening to a songbird singing for you, did it really matter what it was singing about, or the fact that it was singing for you just because you were there?

"In this dream of yours, the references are all jumbled up. You and Thranduil have switched places, you're double counting the people present. Whatever was so horrifying in your dream, was just something that you had no way of seeing coming. It might never have happened if you hadn't have come here, but whether it is good or bad that it happened is only based on how scary it seems to you to imagine it happening. And the unpredictable can be very scary, but it isn't necessarily dangerous or something that should be avoided at all costs, just something that you need to work at adjusting to the idea of the possibility of. Its okay if you don't want to share the details of your dreamscape with us, but as most of it has already happened, there's nothing much left to hide. Thranduil's already been Marked. He already chose to face down Death and has been Chosen. You can't take that back, it's too late; you can only move forward from here."

Elrond looked to Thranduil for translation.

"You never did ask me what happened, you assumed. He says that we hit a Node. Does that mean anything to you?"

Elrond frowned, searching for any memory of the term. Thranduil took the opportunity to sit. This might take a while to explain.


	3. What is going on here?

Elrond finally proffered, "In Elven musical-composition, a node is used only in the context of a symphony which concerns itself with the events leading up to the end an Age of Arda. It is a way of referring to key points of the original Ainurlindalë as perceivable in hindsight. Events that cannot be Foreseen or averted because they are intrinsic to the fabric of Arda. The first symphonies were composed in Valinor by traumatised elves who had survived seemingly world-ending events, as a way of grasping the inevitability of what they had lived through. Those who returned brought with them insight into such healing techniques, some of which has been recorded and archived in the libraries of Imladris."

He eyed his ward, his voice taking on a note of censorship, "However, the books on musical composition only refer to them as dissonances, modulations and deceptive cadences. Healing treatises refer to them only as traumatic memories; philosophical reflections on historical records merely as causality; and religious dissertations as preordained. The only disquisitions written by anyone who spoke directly to the Valier, are stored in my personal library. Which I told you not to go into without first asking my permission. On several occasions. Do you merely forget such things or have you no understanding of boundaries whatsoever?"

Horthor smothered a snigger, but he utterly failed to keep the smirk off his face; the dubious expression on the man's face was one he was rapidly becoming familiar with.

"But Laergulel said that Hithuroch's birth didn't count as a Node, and Pervil said that she didn't know what it meant either, and she's read literally everything in the main library. But then you were too busy picking out your delegates, and Lindir was rushing everywhere like a rabbit who'd glimpsed the Foreshadow of Death. Everyone was too busy for 'unimportant' things. Everyone had something they desperately needed to be doing right now, except me. And I got sick of being snapped at for trying to help." He hunched up, mulishly. "Elladan wouldn't even allow me to take Estel out hunting, even though he said that he needs to work on his tracking skills and build-up his wind. He forbid either of us to set one foot outside of the Imladris wards unaccompanied. He even went as far as to forbid us to ever speak to one another again, but Estel would have slipped out alone to get away from Elrohir.

"So I kinda, talked to myself within his hearing about how a proper Ranger wouldn't run away from a busy crowd, but use it as camouflage. That Rangers needed to be cunning in hostile environments and be willing to take whatever they needed to survive, regardless of morals that are perfectly good guidelines until people end up dead because they are too pious to lower themselves to use common-sense. I might have hinted that even a boy could be cunning enough to practise useful skills that one day might save lives other than just his own, whilst everyone else is only interested in protecting children from danger rather than teaching them how to look after themselves. I might have remarked that a wise Dúnedan would consider it a far worthier challenge to sneak into somewhere small that was technically off-limits, under the noses of their elders but without getting caught, rather than merely escape to somewhere big that had been forbidden to them for reasons unknown.

"So strictly speaking, I didn't go anywhere you had told me personally not to go without asking you first. And Estel and I never technically spoke to each other again, or bothered to try to set a foot outside of the wards of Imladris unaccompanied, either separately or together.

"He DID get very good at not getting caught by play-enemies, which likely WILL save his life someday. And he built-up his wind visiting the White Council Chamber everyday for weeks on end. And if I got to read some of your precious books once he had proved himself capable of lifting even the most delicate objects unseen, without damaging them, what of it? At least they got treated with the care such rare items warrant, and they were always returned before anyone noticed they were missing."

"Not presuming to teach my great-grandmother how to raise children," Horthor remarked to the dungeons in general, "But 'there's no good that will come of trying to tame a wolf to lie beside your campfire'. Emigeru Goleth had some odd whims that have become distorted into strange children's tales by the local woodsmen. Depicting a woodcutter as the hero of the tale, of course, rather than what really happened."

Elrond dropped the topic, outflanked. "What possible relevance could nodes have to my inability to Foresee?" he dismissed, "I'm just overdosed on your drugs and suffering from too little alcohol in my bloodstream."

"If you hadn't been more interested in clucking over me getting drunk as fast as possible in the presence of royalty, rather than thinking it through for yourself, you would have figured that out before you started handing out advice to avoid all alcohol. If you had, it might have occurred to you not to use this," and he withdrew a closed handful from his pocket to hold out to Elrond, "Whilst under the influence of a drug which, taken dry, combines with alcohol which is already in the bloodstream, including what the body naturally produces for itself. You may be an elf rather than a mere man, but you can still be killed by the sheer stupidity of excessive piety! Have you any idea how badly you scared me? By all laws of common-sense I should confiscate this."

Elrond flushed bright-red with embarrassment, unable to preserve his dignity via his normal habits.

"And that should be more than enough proof, even for you, that you've become too dependent on this. I've seen how you treat healers who have become addicted to painkillers; you don't trust them to manage their own medicines after having merely brought the problem to their attention. Would that same ellon truly advise me any differently in this set of circumstances?"

Elrond made a sudden grab for the man's wrist, but Thranduil interfered before the elf could break fingers to retrieve his property. The man twisted away from the struggling elves and held his still-closed hand out through the bars. Tauriel immediately held out her hand to receive the ring before he could be dragged back inside. Their eyes met through the bars, 

"Keep it secret. Keep it safe." and then he was grabbed from behind and the close-quarters fight began in earnest.

Horthor fidgetted, everything in him wanting to step-in and break-up the fighting - to at least snatch the weaker man out of the fight before he was killed. But Tauriel held up a hand to stop him from interfering; utterly calm and composed, quietly confident that the brawling males needed no outside help to sort this out. "Let them rut it out amongst themselves." she advised quietly.

The man did not hold back in the defence of his own life, trusting Thranduil to keep himself clear of anything Elrond dodged. He kept his hand closed as a decoy, but there was more than one occasion where he nearly lost an eye in the scuffle. With Thranduil attempting to lock one arm behind his back the Elflord dragged them all to the floor, the man lowermost, catching him in the groin to reduce resistance. Recapturing the wrist of the decoy in his free hand, he dragged it into range of his teeth. Before he could lose a finger, the man fastened his own teeth onto the Elflord's ear, snatching his hand away during the yelp of pain to grab his attacker's skull, allowing him to get a better grip with his teeth. The screaming made all the elves cringe in sympathy, but they endured until Thranduil had him completely pinned.

The man was still trapped beneath due to the space being too small and narrow for him to wriggle free, but he stopped biting. Once Elrond had regained some control, the man switched to an equally animalistic gesture of reconciliation by licking the blood away - ignoring the quieter cries of distress - until he was certain that the skin there wasn't actually broken, merely blood-spattered from his own bleeding lips and gums. "Stop fussin'," he gritted out, briefly massaging the skin under his hands where he had held the elf roughly by the hair. "There's no blood there that's yours, no permanent damage."

"I wouldn't be so sure," Thranduil cautioned, "You might be completely insensitive to what you just did, but I'm not and neither is he. You will need to be very picky about who you bite in future, for all our sakes."

"Insensitive to what?"

"Soul-bleed. Not as spectacular as what happened when you bit me, but enough to splice you into his soul in the place his twin used to be. He won't attack you again," he concluded, releasing the defeated elf, "He will always recognise you as kin now, no matter what happens."

"It's all happening backwards," Elrond whispered brokenly.

Thranduil caught a hint of the mare's nest of tangled images the Elflord had been concealing from everyone by hiding them behind magical shielding. He was partly caught-up into the oddly shaped soul-bond himself, a third wheel that offered some stability to the pair. He was not sure if Thiadwen would have approved of such a joining. On the other hand, he definitely was not alone anymore, and that was a relief. He lifted Elrond off the man, steadying him as the cowed elf huddled in on himself - too wary of what other aspects of his nightmares of his would come true in unpredictable ways to pay attention to practical necessities like balance. "We'll move him back to the guest quarters," he informed the two guards, "It wouldn't be politic to leave a sick delegate in the dungeons."

"Baw!" the man snapped out, struggling to his feet; the scars on Thranduil's throat suddenly flaring with pain.

"Ñwámë..." Elrond uttered fearfully, shrinking back against Thranduil.

"You hear wolves howling?" the man sounded both surprised and a little envious.

"Lásanya!" Elrond denied, struggling in Thranduil's tightening grip. "I am ill!"

"Oh really? Show me this 'illness' of yours." He challenged, stepping forward to grab the elf by the chin.

Thranduil felt Elrond's fear through the bond as the man's soul overruled his tacit resistance; cowing the Elflord into briefly becoming the omega-male of their trio. He felt the man instinctively attempt to force the channel between the two wider, intervening himself only to guide and limit the amateur manoeuvre, shielding his soul-kinsman from unintentional injury. Held within Thranduil's reassuringly firm mental and physical grip, Elrond relaxed, allowing his soul-brother access to his memories.

As anchor, Thranduil did not fully share this insight; latched into the man's soul as if he held the wriggling body of a hound's whelp close to the face of his own child, unable to directly glean what smells so enthralled its eager attention. Smiling at the mental image of said pup clumsily attempting to reach Elrond to lick his face as he felt the alpha-omega dynamic morph into omega-beta. Startling, when said pup twisted to lick HIM directly on the nose, immediately dropping them all out of close mental-proximity.

"There's not a thing wrong with you a dose of mere common-sense wouldn't cure!" the man stated confidently, releasing him.

Sensing Elrond's tentative hope amid the storm of his doubts, Thranduil added his own confidence in the Healer's protégé to the mix, "And what 'common-sense' would that be?"

"'Kiss and make up'." the man imparted - to Elrond's renewed horror - as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Get your mind out of the gutter, Peradan! Not like that!"

The Elvenking smirked at the Elflord's flare of embarrassment, earning a light dig to his ribcage in reaction. He grinned; he really did like this side to the Elflord. "How then?" he prompted.

The man rolled his eyes, patronisingly stating, "Like twin-brothers."

"I never had one." Thranduil pointed-out lightheartedly.

Elrond blushed, dropping his gaze to the floor, "I don't remember ... Elros and I ... we never..."

The man looked confused, "Do you honestly pay so little attention to how your own sons behave towards each other?"

Elrond frowned, looking back up at him, "I don't know what you mean."

"Tip your head back." When Elrond didn't move, the man gently gripped his chin, pressing him to lean back and place his head against Thranduil's cheek, ignoring his flinch as his ear brushed against skin.

Realisation dawning, Thranduil turned his head slightly to increase the pressure, rubbing his face against the sensitive lobe. Elrond shuddered slightly, flooding the half-finished bond between them with a pure and childlike desire for such innocent comfort. Thranduil was glad of the dark-phase of the moon then, for the bond was eager to reshape itself, drawing him quickly into full and balanced rapport with the other two. He felt the man's good-natured contempt for the incorrigibility of elves as his own, encouraging Elrond to drink deeply of his faith in the rightness of this act. The storm of doubt lost its teeth in the face of united confidence, allowing him to see just how painfully-tight Elrond had wound himself by trying to control things that really ought not be controlled in the first place. His earlier insights were offered freely in return; baffling the Elflord, but mellowing him into trusting, blind-acceptance. He felt the catch in the man's breathing as his own as the man's soul briefly became blindingly bright, burying them in whiteness as if an avalanche had smashed into the core of his being.

Elrond squinted reflexively, pulling away slightly from Thranduil. The light faded as if it had never been. "What was that?"

Thranduil smirked at the distracted scholar who had withdrawn utterly into a world of his own. "I believe that he actually managed a thought, all by himself. And here I was thinking that Men had nothing but sawdust between their ears."

Elrond raised an eyebrow at the lack of response to even blatant provocation. He waved a hand in front of the vacant gaze.

The man warded his hand away, irritated at the attempt to distract him, "Not now Hruf-"

The briefest flash of intense agony and horror left the two elves numb with shock. But the man did not seem to have even felt it, continuing to focus internally.

Thranduil shook off the sensation first, stepping around Elrond to guide their soul-brother to sit, until he could be flanked on the stone shelf as they sat with him. Elrond hesitantly placed a hand on his shoulder, not wishing to invoke a repeat performance. Relieved by the lack of reaction, and guided by Thranduil's recent memories, he ventured, "Faegwanûr?"

The man blinked - distracted from his thoughts by the new word. Turning to Elrond he remarked, "That's much easier to understand than 'mellon'. 'Melmë' never was an easy cognate to grasp."

"I apologise for not understanding your difficulties with it before now."

Gently Thranduil broke in, bracing for pain, "Who was Hruf?"

There was no backlash, merely puzzlement, "Just someone I once knew."

Elrond probed, "What happened with Hruf?"

The man replied neutrally, "He died."

Elrond felt for the memory, but drew a blank. "How did he die?" If he had not already been seeking it, he would have missed the flash of recall to capture the thread: A game of hide-and-seek; a shower of arrows and a dying scream; a horrifyingly familiar face; an explosion of pain from a broken hand.

The man shrugged obliviously, "Just bad luck. Wrong place at the wrong time. Things happen."

Thranduil tugged the man's attention away so that Elrond could process all this in his own time, "You were fond of him?"

"We were..." 

Thranduil felt the tumble of remembered emotions as his own, but he could not find a word to describe what they were to each other either.

"Friends, I guess." the man finished lamely.

"No, my brother. That is not what people use 'friend' to mean."

"What word would you use?"

Thranduil pondered this with great care. Eventually he proffered "'Sanity'."

The man snorted, "Yeah, I guess that would describe it a lot closer. He was very common-sensible."

"'Felmë'," Elrond proffered from Quenya. "Before the Dúnedain, he provided for you; kept you alive where you lacked the wit to do so. I've never heard of such a profound bond with an animal."

"He wasn't an animal. He was a Person."

"Hîdh, Faegwanûr. He didn't call him a monster. He is trying to understand."

"They have souls, not just spirits. They have their own spoken language, even though I cannot make enough of the right sounds to truly speak with them, anymore than I can a Fangorn Tree. I've tried. Hruf always spoke for both of us because I couldn't even say his name aloud without mutilating it."

Insight dawned in Thranduil as the pieces came together, leaving Elrond blinking in reaction to the flash of soul-light, "You went to Beorn to learn to skin-change, so that you could make the sounds no Man could. It's not merely your teeth that change; you're changing things deeper inside your body."

"They don't have scholars. Hruf was intelligent, but he was still a vicious brute, a veteran. Not the toughest, but I have never met anyone more cunning on four feet. He went Lone to be with me, rather than always be defending me from challenge. Said that I was all that hroh he needed. We thought together better than we fought together. Sometimes our minds could move as one mind. I was as cack-handed as the day was long, but he couldn't do any better with his paws so he didn't curl his lip over it too much.

But in matters of cunning, I could be made to submit to him. He didn't care that Beorn would be angry if he found out why I wanted to skin-change, he cared that I learn to speak properly. He never did expect to outlive me, but he hoped that I could make another Yield to me if I could prove my worth in the Tongue. He said that if I could sing a new song without offending his ears, then I would never need to be defended again. That someday, maybe even The Master would listen to my heart-song.

"He believed in me, utterly and completely. And then one day he was ... gone. To have that kind of absolute belief vanish in a final breath is ... indescribable.

"Arda cannot work that way. It does not work that way. No right or wrong to it, no wishful thinking. A soul can be parted from the body; a body can die, but a soul? If a soul can die at all, it does not do so in the same way a body dies. It can contain and spill memories, but the vessel itself is not made of memory. If the soul was an organ, it would be a cross between the heart, the lungs and the stomach. All of these slow to near dormancy in a hibernating creature. Some creatures even have special blood that protects their bodies from damage when these organs get too cold to work at all, so that they can wake up again with the thaw. I'm guessing that souls work like that. That they can go dormant without a body to anchor them.

"We went to the Dead Marshes once. Hruf kept me from falling in. He called me a senseless whelp, too curious for my own good, but he kept me from falling in. They are fascinating. Dangerous, but fascinating. If you put a hand in the water, they rise like hungry fish. Not the bodies, the spirits. I wanted to see if I could feed them, but Hruf kept pulling me away. He said that if I wanted to become a necromancer, I would have to find something other than myself to feed them. I argued that I didn't want to raise an army of undead, I just wanted to understand what they were. What it was like to be that way. Hruf said when I could skin-change well enough to Tongue properly, if I was still that interested, then he would seek to introduce me to one of the lesser ring-wraiths. That it would be would be easier for me to understand a creature that had once been a man than the dead-elves I was so determined to feed myself too. I yielded to that."

"Why elves?" Horthor sounded a little ill, but he had finally found a question that he did want the answer to.

The man leaned forward to look at him directly, "Because they are the First-born, therefore the most stable after the True-born. They weren't born into a culture that believes in mortality, therefore they don't have a space set-aside in their minds for the idea of being raised as Undead; only Living or whatever their word is for how they are now. They would rather remain as they are now than settle for a half-life, therefore there is less chance of error creeping in. Necromancy is what happens if one is too impatient to get it right the first time - to Rebirth the dead properly rather than just Raising them. Elves can't be Raised, therefore they can only be Rebirthed to Life. I postulated that if I can figure out how to Rebirth a First-born, then I could figure out what needs to be in place to stop others from merely becoming Raised. And if I can figure that out, then the Ainur could reweave the Rings. I think Annatar was trying to reweave them himself, through his own Ring. I think he was in such a rush to prove himself that he messed up. Big time maybe, but anyone can make a mistake and then make it worse. Anyone."

"You don't hate him for it?" It sounded like Elrond was talking about Sauron, but Thranduil alone could state with certainty that he was thinking about someone else.

"All any of us can do is make the best decision we can based on the limited information and understanding we have in that moment. If one considers that a newborn is not hateful for screaming at the top of its lungs, naïve as it is yet of any other way to independently interact with Arda, then by what yardstick can evil be measured and hate justified? One can always learn to do better, if others are willing to believe that such things are possible. It is easy to hate that which we don't want to understand. Harder to grasp that by doing so, we are refusing to accept ourselves. The Enemy is not out there, until we lose faith in ourselves in the mirror of others. Until we condemn ourselves to be our own worst-enemy and make someone else the Scapegoat of our self-condemnation.

"If I hate someone, then I'm attacking my own Nightmare instead of listening to her. If Maeldaer can grasp that, then so can any other elf, even without being born Peradan."

Elrond put an arm around the man, ignoring the reaction of stiffening in reawakened pain, both physical and emotional, and the mental confusion at the unfamiliar gesture of affection. It was easier to boost the capacity of the bond by utilising physical contact as a strengthening medium, than attempting to stabilise a more abstract connection in the brief darkness of the new moon. For Men, the hands and lips were commonly utilised to communicate non-carnal affection. Eldar were culturally far less demonstrative even with close kin; because of their fear of the inborn vulnerability the absence of moonlight forced upon them. Perhaps it was easier for a Peredhel to grasp the importance of tactile affection than most, once one of the most core tenets of elven propriety had been so blatantly proved inimical to good health.

It was not an easy contortion to manage whilst sitting alongside someone, but once the man grasped what he was trying to achieve, he twisted into it, resting his forehead against the Elflord's ear to spare him the unbearable tickle of whiskers. Perhaps male elves inherently so rarely have beards because having one makes it so unnecessarily difficult to demonstrate affection this way. Ironic, that the shipwright Círdan, whose vessels carried the fading to the Undying Lands, was the only elf famed for having the ability to grow one. Hardly a paradigm of caring affection, seen relative to such insights. It had been staring them in the face the entire time.

Elrond's soul flashed darkest of the three at this unexpected revelation, as millennia of ingrained alignment to Light in him were undermined in an instant. Thranduil grabbed at him both physically and mentally, steadying him so that he could not Fall too far, drawing upon his rapport with the Forest to present a third option. Immediately the tiny cell came alive with the thunder of waterfalls and the scent of wet rock as Imladris answered; underground caverns echoing with the boom of cracking rock, lighting up the network of underground rivers with sound as clear in their minds as a map, as the two kingdoms sought to open new lines of communication between them.

The man's presence in their link drew their attention to white goblins. Millions of them. 'Gnomes', he corrected the elves, drawing them deeper into the vision of the underground. 'Goblins love fire but gnomes cannot bear any hot-light. It blinds their heat-sighted eyes. They retreat to the water because the noise in the thin air is too loud for them right now. Already they are singing underwater, do you hear? Even sea creatures cannot sing more beautifully than gnomes. Sometimes, in the still, deep roots of Moria, I would swim just to hear them singing in the darkness, far away from the hot-light. There are other lights down there, cold lights, mostly green, blue and purple. Strange plants and stranger creatures that make their own light somehow. It is more beautiful than the night-sky down there, but infinitely dangerous too in the deeper waters. There are no birds down there, but many, many iridescent-white species of bat, each with their own pattern of cold-light in their wing membranes. Once, goblins and gnomes were strong allies. But fire and water don't mix easily. Gnomic wisdom underpins everything above. Never forget this, and you will never lose your faith in Eru Ilúvatar.'

They surfaced together, hot-light overwhelming the beauty of what lay somewhere beneath their feet. No phantom lights greeted them as they opened their eyes, only the dullness of bare rock unadorned by crystalline deposits of minerals that had been seeping downwards since the creation of Arda.

"My Lords?" Tauriel queried as the translucent crowns faded from her sight. She had seen three. King Thranduil had borne the classic branch-antlers of the White Hart. Though only young growth as yet, they were noticeably bigger than before. Lord Elrond's antlers had been younger yet differently shaped, as if from another species of deer. Also, they looked more like roots than branches even at this point of growth. The man's crown had been more like upright horns with visible growth rings, though there was a spur on every ring - together forming a spiral pattern up the length of the horn, as if the horns counter-rotated slightly as each ring grew. The horns were damaged however; one horn broken short and split nearly to the base, the other missing a lot of its spurs and heavily scored. It seemed odd that elves would have fast-growing antlers whereas a man would have slow-growing horns, but she was new to interpreting religious symbols so maybe she was missing something.

The reverence in her tone caught Thranduil's attention through the sensation of dreamy content Elrond was flooding their bond with. "How many?"

"How many what, my Lord?"

"How many Lords did you see?"

"Three, brannon nín. All three of you, but all quite different from each other."

"If you were forced to choose, which one would your heart tell you to follow?"

"The White Hart's blessing clearly lies with you, my king. I did not recognise whom the others represent, therefore I would follow you wherever the Hart leads."

Thranduil smiled in relief "Tell me, what did your eyes tell you of our patrons?"

"You are bestowed with the branch-antlers of the Hart. They were smaller when I first saw them, as if they were barely two months old. Now they must be near as big as the Hart's own at this time of year." Receiving Thranduil's nod of approval, she moved on, "Lord Elrond seems to have been blessed with root-antlers; small as yet but clearly distinct from the Hart."

Thranduil laughed openly at this, startling Elrond into paying attention. "What amuses you so?"

"It would appear that you have been Chosen to become the consort of the Black Hind."

Elrond looked pained, "As if a mortal, black, four-footed female wasn't bad enough, now I have an immortal one to worry about aggravating?"

"Look at it this way," the man prompted, "You won't have to worry about either of them being the death of you anymore - she's Rebirth. Therefore, Maeldaer's mare has already accomplished 'killing you' on her behalf as her blesséd hoof-dam. I tried to tell Laergulel that the colt was Wyrd - she IS your resident adviser in such matters - but she didn't believe me. She wouldn't even come and look for herself. Said Maeldaer knew what he was doing and that I was ... nevermind, forget it. Anyway, you got the Black Hind! Lucky sod of an elf." he muttered darkly. "Who picked me then?"

"Yours are many years old, and not antlers but spiral-spurred horns. One is broken and split, the other scored and partly stripped, with deep gouges."

"Never heard of that one." the man mused. "It sounds impressive enough from a Dark-sider perspective though. They rank the heavily scarred as veterans. Hruf was so scarred his hide was a patchwork. I never did find out what happened to his carcass. Probably burned."

Elrond flinched, "Is there some ... ritual for their dead?"

"Why? It's not like it gets performed that often, and we were Loners anyway. They aren't sentimental like Men anyway, they're Scentimental. Everything is about smell. If he had had a proper partner, who had survived him and could go back to the carcass, they would have collected his scent glands and his hide. Maybe one of the unbonded veterans would have chosen the newly unpartnered, based merely on his smell; out of Scentimentality. It's an animal thing. It wouldn't have been relevant in our case. There was no-one to Impress, and he wouldn't have wanted me to get myself slain by going back to him anyway; not even in my head. Mourning the dead gets people killed."

Thranduil could sense that this worried Elrond. "One man's meat is another man's poison," he cautioned aloud, "You worry too much. It's not as if he isn't perfectly willing to talk about him now he isn't fearful of speaking of it."

"This isn't about me," the man commented. "That is, he's the one who is trying to get himself blamed for all this. I guess it's a tough idea to chew that I don't blame anyone."

"You dislocated my son's jaw."

"He's the prat who thought he was 'rescuing' me. I didn't think it though - I just reacted to an armed warrior suddenly grabbing me out of nowhere for no reason."

Thranduil blinked, then started laughing. "Now that's impressive, even if he did smash his own hand doing it. I think you should call them even and leave it at that. You really injured an elf that badly?"

"Half-elf," the man corrected absently, "And I had mithril-lined gloves on at the time because Hruf was teaching me to use my hands to block an attack. He said that I was so useless with them that it wouldn't matter if I lost one in combat someday, especially if it saved my life."

"Were they spiked on bladed in any way?"

"Be reasonable. Who in their right mind would bite weaponised armour in a practise session?"

"Then they don't count. Mithril isn't heavy enough to add anything to a blunt-force blow, and it didn't save your hand from breaking. If anything it probably lessened the impact, as armour is supposed to."

"I thought he was going to kill me. I just hit him and ran. Thought I would catch an arrow too and that that would be it. Game over. But he didn't kill me. Even though I'd hit him. Why would I hate someone who spared my life?" he asked Elrond directly. "We all made mistakes that day, and only one of us got killed. Hard cheese to the unlucky ones. Ultimately, nothing is guaranteed, it's just one big gamble."

"I thought you said Arda didn't work that way?" Elrond pressed.

"It does and it doesn't, at the same time. Nothing makes sense, and everything makes sense. You either weave it, or it weaves you. Hruf absolutely believed that he would die someday. I'm not sure if I will die someday or not. He died, I lived. Or merely, a group of passing elves shot a monster chasing a man, and instead of saying thank-you, the man was so scared by being chased by a monster, he hit an elf who surprised him, hard enough to actually break his own fist.

"That's the standard version of events everyone prefers. Ordinary enough not to worry anyone, just remarkable enough to remember it at all. The kind of tale that if anyone recognises you, they might offer to buy you a drink then congratulate you on being such a lucky idiot and want to be told what hilariously stupid thing you did that resulted in you being chased by a monster in the first place. They'll even make-one-up for you - invent a dozen silly things you were probably doing and laugh themselves sick whilst doing so. And this is called 'being friendly'. And if you don't smile and laugh and join-in, well they probably won't slit your throat as long as you don't act upset. I just don't know why Men persist in claiming to hate other races that behave the same way. So I smile and laugh and invent even sillier stories for them, because Men ARE funny, just not for the reasons they think they are. But I have better things to do with my life than stay with them and 'be friendly' for years on end. It's merely a good way not to get killed when you get cornered. A friend seems to be someone who comes up to you and attacks you, and if you play the game well enough, then they don't kill you. Therefore I don't really see the point of having a separate word for enemy."

There wasn't much either of them could say to that. Eventually, Elrond offered, "I guess I understand now why you preferred to spend your time in the libraries, if you felt that you were always surrounded by enemies."

"It can be fun. But it can be tiring too. I like to read because it fills the space in my mind where Hruf was for so long. That helps me to relax. Only, there's no library here, so I want to talk to people all the time."

"We do HAVE books here. Just not all in one place. Does your mind never rest?"

The man frowned, "Do your lungs never rest? All that breathing all the time, don't you ever just want to stop for a few hours? It was different before. You say 'sanity', he says 'felmë'. Both are true in their own way. Abstract thinking was always what I did best, but I had more than that. Without him I feel like I'm not fully alive anymore. You say that we are bonded, but that feeling hasn't gone away. Maybe you mean something other than what I understand bonded to mean." Abruptly he stood and went to the cell door. After a moment's hesitation, Horthor unlocked it, allowing the man to leave; climbing the stairs without looking back.

"My apologies," Thranduil admitted, "Perhaps you were right to worry. He seems so confident in himself that it is hard to believe that it is all a mask."

"It's not a mask." Elrond disagreed, "That is why it is so hard to believe that it could be. But he is only that headstrong confident about what he can do, because the alternative is to admit to what he can't do. He once told me that ultimately we should all be saving ourselves, but that we will end-up either becoming the person that will save the world or the one who will break it, or die trying to achieve either. The fact that he honestly believes that he could save the whole world, should also tell you how little he believes that he can save himself."

"Well one way or another, I'm not leaving you down here. Pick whichever diplomatic excuse you wish, but I don't want the two of you so far apart."

"Healing duties. He's worse than you for ignoring that he is covered in blood."

Thranduil shook his head at the irony, "I can't imagine a more closely matched-set of people with severe problems in common than we three, despite our differences. How did we end-up entrusted with anything?" He stood, moving to the unlocked door.

"I believe that you have that backwards," Elrond contradicted, following him, "Who else would willingly volunteer to be chewed-up and spat back out time and again, yet never complain about the price of living this way?"

"Apart from every other warrior?" Thranduil led the way upstairs.

"Maybe it is different here. I work with scholars more than warriors these days. They don't complain to me as such, but nor do they hide the fact that they are blatantly not complaining to me about each other. Our soul-brother can be a merciless mimic even when he does not mean to be."

Thranduil glanced back, "Are you two coming with us or not?" To Elrond he continued, "There is much that needs to be organised that I have already been partially made aware of, but the new moon will not be with us for long. The bond needs to be strengthened before it stops being as malleable as it is now."

"Agreed." Elrond confirmed, "Other things can wait one more day. It is a higher priority to stabilise him within this dynamic before the opportunity has passed."


	4. Hey, where are you going?

Tauriel noted Horthor's agitation as they followed in their lord's footsteps. Whilst she personally felt calmer in the face of all these revelations than she ever had felt since she was very young, Horthor seemed as uptight as if he had just heard the first warning buzz from a nest of giant wasps. She was reminded of what her lord had originally proposed as the direction he wished to steer Horthor into before events had overtaken them. Catching her officer's gaze, she nodded to him, "Go." It was not her place to tell trustworthy scouts to ignore their intuition in such matters.

Suddenly confident in his need to act, Horthor slipped past the two lords and took off at a fast lope, buying himself time to speak to the man before the rest of the party arrived. He heard their footsteps slow in reaction, then focused on what lay ahead of him. There were so many things he wished to confront the man about, but which of these were the most important?

He did not bother to knock upon reaching the guest quarters but, finding the man inside, he left the door slightly open rather than imply that he was attempting to corner them in here together by shutting it firmly behind him. The man eyed him warily, raising his chin and shifting his weight back as if readying to throw a blade - or flee; Horthor reminded himself not to jump to conclusions. Any guard will tell you that cornering someone who is trying to escape certain capture is far more dangerous than facing someone who is willing to stand and fight you for their freedom. He held his own empty hands up where they were plainly visible, palms out, circling slowly to move further into the room, so as not to incite physical aggression. "Have you any idea how scary you are? You come in here, ignoring all our rules, acting as if you know better than anyone else, with no-one visibly backing you up. You then proceed to openly talk about things that no normal person would even think, let alone dare to say aloud, as if you have not only the right to be listened to, but the authority to change everything. Worse, you ARE being listened to, and things are changing. Changing so fast that it is terrifying.

"You attack my king so violently that he is left with scars, yet he acts as if you have given him hope where all hope had been lost. Tauriel, who has always been as pragmatic as any warrior could hope for in a leader, is now talking as if star-struck by the Valar. You speak to the greatest healer in Middle-Earth as if you know more than he does about illness, and manage to start a fight with him as if the pair of you are less than a century old, despite the fact that he has more than sixty-four centuries of experience and three children of his own. Worse, you win that fight in a way that is utterly taboo to even think of doing - bleeding your souls together through yet another act of violence against an elf - condemning not only your own lord but mine as well, to an eternity of being soul-bound to each other and to you, a mortal man. You condemn them to future-pain greater than even you could grasp, only to turn on them immediately and say that this ... THING, which they never asked for, is still not good enough for you? You who hid the fact that you were soul-bound to a violent monster, for Eru knows how long, from the same healer-warrior you have condemned to share your soul as your protector for the rest of your natural life, along with my own king? And you won't even settle for that brief span, oh no. You dream of bringing back the dead; of coercing the Ainur themselves into unravelling the very tapestry of Arda itself! Either you are the most arrogantly selfish person ever to have ever set foot in Middle-Earth bar none but the Dark Lord himself, or you are the most dangerously ill person to have ever been sheltered by the Western Idealism of elves!"

"You think I don't know this?" the man hissed back, "You think that I am not plagued by questions of my own sanity on a daily basis? Even before Hruf, I've suspected that some 'invisible friend' has been with for as long as I can remember. The only comfort I have found in today's events is that whomever's horns I bear, they mark me as not belonging to who I thought might be guiding me. You think that you are scared now? That I am going too fast for you, upsetting your nice, normal, predictable life by having the audacity to even exist in the first place? Try living with all I know and all I suspect, with no-one you can trust with knowing every doubt that keeps you awake at night, and then see how scared you are!

"You think that I should have told Elrond? That I should have confided in him? You have no concept of how terrified I have been that I am solely responsible for unsettling him so badly with the little I have managed to bring myself to confide to him before today. He's a White Councillor for pity's sake, and yet he upholds the confidentiality of his patients as sacrosanct! If Lothlórien chooses to press him, which duty do you think he will uphold as the purest? Warrior or Healer? I don't want to be the spark that sets the world on fire again, but I don't have the option to 'be normal' either. Better to dream of bringing back the slain and smacking some heads together until nobody wants to fight anymore, than allow events to turn out the same way that they always have before!"

Horthor sighed, eyeing the clutter of empty and half-empty wine-bottles that still littered the room. "You weren't joking about drinking the king's cellar dry, were you?"

"I'm used to stronger drinks. I've been distilling my own brandy for years."

"What's 'brandy'?" Horthor asked, selecting an as-yet unopened bottle of his favourite wine and snagging a clean goblet.

"Like Ice-wine, but stronger and made from a variety of fruits." The man retrieved his own abandoned goblet.

"What's 'Ice-wine'?"

"The King's Reserve is Ice-wine. Wine separated in Laketown as-was each winter, by allowing the contents of the barrels to freeze, then dumping out the pink-ice into clean barrels to be relabelled as 'Mother's Milk' low-alcohol wine. These were their last real exports - the only significant commodity which could still be cheaply refined and sold-on to stop their citizens from starving to death.

"I don't envy the former Master of Laketown. He inherited a lost cause in terms of economic viability. No new trade opportunities could be expected in the shadow of the desolation in his lifetime. There was nothing he could do to better the lives of his people, and its a miserable place to feel trapped in. The fish oil industry can't compete with more desirably scented oils except in sheer quantity, lowering the price per keg as its common uses are replaced by other products. Primitive fishing techniques damage the habitats of other species, reducing fish numbers, which leads to overfishing and greater damage. The tar industry is even worse, but what else can you hope to produce locally and export south from the shadow of the desolation? Charcoal is bulky yet light, a nightmare in export transportation fees and filthy to handle, slow to produce and easier to source locally by those whose specialist work demands charcoal specifically. Woodash is even less profitable to export, and exportable quantities of fish-oil-soap would require even more fish to be caught. Everyone else can manage by throwing their own waste woodash at waste fat and grease. What little profit they made selling lamp oil and tar allowed them to buy in wine to sell-on or process into goods worth more than they spent on importing it. But the Woodland Realm was their only wealthy customer, and you are all so good at supplying yourselves that they were spending almost all of their profit on buying food straight back from you.

"The biggest problem is that under stressful conditions, Men tend to breed more children than enough to replace losses. Laketown after Smaug arrived always had a lot of extra mouths to feed that they couldn't afford. Scant food means more illness among the oldest and youngest - the extra expense of buying in medicine means less money for food - and more pressure means more accidents, thus more permanently incapacitated adults - which leads to more breeding to replace losses rather than allowing the population to shrink to sustainable levels, because Men have no natural predators to cull the weak as animal populations do.

"By the time the last Master inherited the burden, hoarding-instinct had been leaking down in the water from the mountain for generations. Luckily the Forest is upriver from the lake, but there was no such luck for the inhabitants of Laketown. Those who gained wealth were loathe to part with it: Not such a problem for the common-people, but a big problem for those successive generations born to power. Dragon-sickness can infect more than dwarves, though they are the most prone to it."

Horthor frowned, "Why do you know so much about Laketown?"

"It was his task." Elrond intervened, pushing open the door revealing the loitering group, allowing Thranduil to enter before him. "When the halfling returned through Imladris with tales of his adventures, my ward brought certain details to my attention. When he insisted on coming with us, I assigned the history of Laketown to him to study. Both as a Man who could offer a Secondborn's perspective on the town, and as a local expert on dragons and the impact of their presence on the wider community. If there was any possibility of Dragon-sickness being a factor in these talks, I trusted him to find it. Instead we were all subjected to an endless amount of questions about the history of Eryn Galen dating back to before Oropher even arrived here." he mock-glared at the man.

"The timeline of events doesn't add up to Dragon-sickness in Eryn Galen, but it was obvious that something was off. Even now I'm not convinced that I know all of it. There's too many unanswered questions."

"Not just Fish?" Thranduil raised an eyebrow, smiling.

"He's been on about fish ever since he started researching Laketown." Elrond sighed. "He would have brought the entire library with him if he could. Instead we became his library on the road east."

The man snorted, "I asked you to bring Pervil with us. You said no."

"Whatever private opinions have been shared with you about the desirability of Pervil's company in social situations, she is indispensable in her talent for recalling information she has read word-perfect. I could not afford to leave Imladris if she had not agreed to remain in residence during my absence. You have no idea how many disasters cannot happen because she remained behind."

"Is that why you were so... The day after I asked you seemed ... stressed."

Elrond walked over to him, Thranduil followed, grasping the intention, positioning himself to guide in the mental link.

"I will show you a small sample of the Foresights I experienced from exploring that possibility," he offered, placing a hand against an unbloodied area of skin. Thranduil stood behind the man, taking his wrists into his own hands as he braced the least experienced member of their trio. The man stiffened as the flow of memory began, blinking and twitching as he flinched from the endless litany of preventable accidents, misunderstandings and even deaths.

"I owe you a great debt, Faegwanûr. Had you never asked about the possibility of her coming with us, I may never have realised just how important she is to Imladris. Nor the sheer scale of the disruption that could have been avoided all these years because her contribution has been undervalued. I have set Lindir the task of rectifying this in my absence. Just as you benefitted from being compared to the disruption caused by thirteen dwarves after they had left, so she and Lindir will flourish while neither you or I are there except in the memories of residents. My Foresights for Imladris have been trouble-free by comparison after addressing that issue. More than enough to convince me that you coming east with us would be worth every dram of pain it would likely cost the rest of us. Only Maeldaer's future is likely to be unavoidably strewn with tragedy, and I addressed this issue as much as it could be addressed before we left. I even took your advice on how to solve that."

"Celeborn?"

"The Lord of Lothlórien will seek to bring Shadowfax to Imladris, just as you suggest."

Elrond did not expect to be suddenly caught-up in an enthusiastic embrace, but more than that he caught the wistful look in Thranduil's eyes over the man's shoulder. Realisation, however belated, dawned on him. "You had no intention of attacking me?" he asked rhetorically.

Thranduil looked down and away. "I've never been given Moonshine by a healer. I don't present the required symptoms."

The man stepped out from between them, allowing Elrond to tentatively approach Thranduil with the vague idea of embracing him in turn. The man moved away to engage Horthor with questions about how to approach the servants over whatever supplies and services were appropriate, doing his best to distract the guards and blot out his link to his soul-brothers.

Tauriel however was enthralled by this awkward moment of attempting to discover how two male elves might display platonic affection to each other. She caught Thranduil's flick of attention in her direction, though it did not occur to her that it had been occasioned by the mental comment of 'typical girl' which had reached the two lords despite the man's best efforts to keep his thoughts to himself.

Elrond's blush of embarrassment was hidden from Tauriel, but not from Thranduil. He met the king's gaze knowing that his fears of voyeurism were horribly clear in his memories. He offered up memories of his conversations with their soul-brother over the nature of his nightmares, attempting to offset the graphic imagery Thranduil couldn't fail to be aware of.

Thranduil sighed internally. 'She just wants to practise looking for the Mark of the Hart and the Hind. Surely you must be used to such curiosity from Galadriel?'

A memory of an averted Foresight rose unbidden to Elrond's recollection. The man dropped the delicate wine bottle he was holding - effectively distracting Tauriel by splattering her with wine and broken glass, however unintentionally - in his cack-handed, shocked reaction to the memory. Thranduil stole the opportunity to pull Elrond into an unobserved embrace, pressing firmly ear-to-ear with his soul-brother. By the time Tauriel looked back at the embracing pair, neither of them cared whether they were being watched or not - too caught-up in allowing the uncomplicated and pure nature of the true interpretation of the nightmare-Foresight to cleanse their memories of such inferior manifestations.

The fact that the man promptly started crying in reaction to the overwhelming flood of shared emotions the elves themselves were too disciplined to express themselves - rather than, as the guards appeared to conclude, in effeminate or childish embassment over his clumsiness - was enough to finally convince Elrond that none of the aspects of his nightmarish imagery were to be feared, merely things that had been so unbelievable from his perspective at the time, that he would have been unable to accept such an outcome if he had directly Foreseen it. This had never been something that he could be allowed to avert by Foreseeing it clearly, and his fear of losing control over his destiny had twisted his perception of the imagery into something ultimately corrupted instead of intrinsically pure. If he wept at that himself, he no longer cared. The hard knot of fear in his gut was finally easing, dissolving into a bond as pure as the newborn foal would have been willing to offer him. He had been in error to think that their soul-brother was the one who needed to be more willing to embrace what was being offered to him by this unusual union of souls. The man had been right to point out that he was the one convinced that the events which had brought them together ought to have been avoided. If his sons' orc-hunting party had not killed the man's soul-bonded, then the events that had led to him becoming a ward of Imladris and thereafter, a member of a elven diplomatic party, could never have occurred.

A composite-memory of Hruf seen in the light the man had always seen him - a grizzled warrior of a creature, scarred by many battles to defend his Master's cause yet bright enough to think for himself; who had been impressed by a mind that perceived him as a brother of the true faith despite his inborn alignment to violence; who had defied the simplicity of his culture by Choosing a puny weakling who nevertheless had the guts to face him down, abandoning his own kind to guard a senseless whelp who would never have survived alone. Beyond the cultural preconceptions of a monster - an oversized predator that could never disguise the inbred viciousness of his lean body, wiry coat and the heavy-headed bone-structure that supported powerful jaws packed with sharp teeth - there was intelligence in those eyes beyond what it took to mercilessly track, hunt and kill anything that crossed his path. There was a subtle restraint behind the rough play-fighting; an odd yet familiar gentleness behind the biting; tender care behind the pain of wounds being licked-clean. A mawkish sense of humour coloured memories of being pounced upon or shoved into things until reflexes were refined. Long, tedious hours of strained-patience as his Chosen struggled to pronounce basic syllables of the Tongue. Quiet nights curled-up together, fireside; wrestling with concepts that defied translation. Joyous moments when his Chosen mastered skin-changing well enough to say his personal sound-name properly for the first time; mastered basic words; finally stated something clearly in the Tongue without making him laugh at the garbled attempt; grew strong enough in his wind to finally sing out his own signature-sound loud enough to receive an answering acknowledgement of kinship. Always there had been a background of unwavering faith and belief in his prey-like Chosen, no matter how many times the whelp's incorrigibly naïve curiosity drove him to explore intrinsically lethal situations. A grudging admiration for great ambition and for the idealism which fuelled it. A sense of deep-fulfillment in being the guardian of one whose heart-song was so poignant, that surely even The Master would hear it someday; if he could just keep the whelp from being killed or eaten by everything he immediately stuck his nose into upon discovering it existed. A gloriously-stable balance of irreverent reverence for the pathetically-soft creature that had uncommonly enthralling eyes and adamance of life-purpose.

Such was the memory of Hruf as gifted to those who might otherwise have seen no more to him than a common warg to be killed on-sight, by someone whom the White Matriarch, Chosen of Azog, had personally accepted the signature-song of as being worthy of reply. As had become his habit under the stress of challenging imagery, Elrond offered-up a wordless prayer - not for the safekeeping of his own soul this time, but for the disembodied soul of one he no longer perceived as a monster, however ugly to the naked eye he might have been.

Tauriel gasped as she momentarily saw the entwined antlers of the Hart and Hind in their supernatural full-glory; straight, white branches and twisted, black roots dwarfing the forms of the two elves. From the branches sprouted more shapes and sizes of leaf, flower, seed-pod, nut and fruit than she had ever imagined possible, with a huge beehive nested in the very centre; whilst the roots were adorned with every possible shape of mushroom and crystal, sprouting draping cascades of pale, hair-like rootlets braided with precious metals and uncut stones, holding what must be what the Arkenstone had looked like uncut, clutched at the core of the root-ball.

She glanced towards the man as the vision faded, but she had missed whatever, if anything, had been available to see - turning her head had immediately banished the Sight. He caught her gaze, and smiled gently at her look of disappointment. "If you didn't see it, then it wasn't yet time for it to be revealed to you. Faith and curiosity alone may not be sufficient; patience and experience tend to be vital components also, at least in my own case. I am not a Firstborn with many millennia of experience behind me to draw upon. I'm just a man, not capable of even fully changing into an animal at will, who is however, quite capable of dropping a perfectly good bottle of wine when startled."

"Not one of mine I hope?" Thranduil broke-in, drawing away a little from Elrond, "Laketown no longer exists to make more. Last I heard, Lord Bard was still attempting to draw up new contracts. Wine imports aren't high in his priorities right now, not with everything King Daín is having imported through Dale. Our loyal bargeman has too many new things to deal with currently, to have time to find a replacement for himself."

"Not one of yours, no. Though I have enough skill with such primitive preparation techniques to ensure that you won't run short of strong, local wine, even if I have to train your healer apprentices myself. I'd rather get a feel for your internal economy first though. I don't want to annoy the Trees."

Elrond retreated to the window as servants arrived to discover what was needed, attempting to repair any visible damage to his appearance before anyone but his soul-brothers became aware of his loss of emotional control. It was one thing to be open to personal catharsis, quite another to make a public spectacle of it. An unusual man surrounded only by elves might more easily be seen to be emotional to no great sensation, but it was quite another for an elf of his age and level of responsibility to be seen to be in tears.

Through their soul-bond he sensed the man's frustrated intention, not bothering to dodge the indignity of being swatted on the backside of the head in reproval for such habits of thought. He understood that gentle violence between males better now than he had before. Though he was reasonably familiar with how the children of Men interacted with each other, he had always found the adult version of such blatant social-violence distasteful. Why dwarves and men always seemed to have to show-off how much pain they could endure for the purposes of social-bonding had been beyond that which he had wished to understand. He had thought it merely unrefined, animalistic behaviour to be looked down upon. Yet he had been equally guilty of being animalistic in his adherence to racially-accepted standards of behaviour, sticking to the established rituals of his own kind as firmly as if he were a mere bird, reliant upon rigid courtship rituals and distinctive identifiers to ensure that pairing-off remained within the bounds of its own subspecies. Rough-housing may be unrefined compared to the sophistication of good manners, but it tended to be inclusive rather than exclusive in nature. Worrying excessively about dignity in the eyes of others was how elves became isolated from each other, let alone bigoted against other races. Firstborns could do better than that.

'They would have from very the beginning, if the Ainur hadn't been squabbling amongst themselves since before the beginning of Arda.' the man reflected. 'The Black Hind is a Dark Maiar by conventional division, normally limited to association with mortal death, nightmares and the spirits of the departed. I may not be her Favoured, but in hindsight it was a bit much to hope that she would Favour the Secondborn directly. She exists Between mortality and immortality; thus who else could be her Favoured but a Peredhel? I'd hoped that somehow I might yet discover that I was a Dúnedain bastard, or learn to fully skin-change, and that that might be enough. But it is better that she Favours you. I may not have even a half millennia, and she must have a Favoured who can do justice to her matronage. A Healer-Warrior of your experience can provide that for her where I cannot.'

Elrond drew the man closer, 'You may not be Peredhel, but you are unique in your own right. I could not ever hope to be considered worthy but for you and Thranduil supporting me. Just as I am not worthy to be the Hart's Chosen, I am not worthy of whomever is backing you. Whomever that is discovered to be, however Dark and terrifying a vision it may be to those who would habitually see such things as evil, I will not turn away from that sight if you are here to aid me to 'overcome my embattled state'.'

'You are not Lesser because you are Secondborn.' Thranduil confirmed, 'Even if you are pure-blood Man, perhaps especially if you are, you are Equal to us. It is not wrong to delegate that which is not yours to do. But neither is it right to give away that which is yours to become. You may not have been born a pure-blood man; I was not born Avari, I was Reborn in heart to be worthy of the Hart, by your patron. Whatever your parentage, however simple or goblinic, you are my soul-brother forever.'

'Even if Thiadwen disapproves?' the man asked very quietly.

Thranduil grabbed him from behind, spinning him roughly to face him. "Especially if Thiadwen disapproves!" he fiercely declared aloud, startling the servants. 'Twittering songbirds' he dismissed, only to be roughly reminded of the memory of millions of the same, threatening to peck his eyes out. "I apologise," he offered over his shoulder, "I forget myself often today. A side-effect of strong healing magic." 'Well its true!' he protested to Elrond's reproachful expression and subsequent amusement - which was then further enhanced by the man's unthinking reaction to lean-in and nudge Thranduil's nose with his own. 'Incorrigible whelp,' he scoffed fondly; and for a skipped heartbeat he thought that he saw Hruf over the man's shoulder, tail wagging. But the mirage was gone even before the man spun to look in heart-wrenching hope. 'I WILL SEE YOU AGAIN!' he declared so adamantly to the empty space, that neither elf dared to believe otherwise.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies to my readers. I am currently working on planning the outline of future chapters as my unposted two attempts at the next-chapter went awry.
> 
> I fully intend to continue writing this work, but I need to be careful not to write myself into a cul-de-sac here.


End file.
